Like the Jasmine That Took the Wall

“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.”
— Toni Morrison, Beloved

They never ask how it starts. Not really.

They only see the two women in sync. The way we move like twin flames, how our laughter loops into silence, how our pauses are never awkward. They think we’ve always been like this. But we weren’t.

She wasn’t always my person. And I wasn’t hers.

We didn’t even like each other in school. Isn’t that funny? All that closeness waiting quietly beneath the surface while we judged each other from across the room. Maybe we were mirrors before we were mirrors. Maybe that’s part of the magic. That we chose each other later, not out of convenience, not because we were thrown together by circumstance — but because something in us finally recognised something in the other. A mirror. A map.

It started small. A hello. An unexpected softness. And then it grew. Rapidly. Like jasmine.

She became the greatest love story of my life.

She saw me when I needed it most — not the curated version, but the mess. The transition. The bruised ego. The woman who had just moved countries and didn’t know who she was anymore. She saw the grief of that becoming and didn’t flinch. She just said, in the way she does, without saying it at all: I see the asshole in you. I’m one too. Let’s go.

And we did.

The world has never really known what to do with women like us. Loud in truth. Soft in heart. Direct in a way that makes others squirm. I speak so I can understand. I name what others dance around. I press into the uncomfortable because that’s where the clarity is. But it unsettles people. They mistake honesty for aggression. Depth for defiance.

But not her. But so does she.

She never recoiled. She held my wildness like it was something sacred.

When I didn’t have the words, she had the understanding. When I didn’t have the courage, she didn’t push—she stood quietly nearby until I stepped forward. She never judged. Never left. Never tried to make me someone easier to love.

And that is a kind of love I wish for everyone.

She doesn’t need daily updates to stay close. Time and distance have nothing on us. She officiated my wedding like it was written in the stars. Because it was. Because we are. That karmic.

She knows when something's wrong with just three words. Or none at all. And when I say them, she doesn’t ask what happened. She just shows up.

She is my refuge outside of conventional family. My soul twin. My gatherer.

You see, jasmine is misunderstood.

It looks delicate. But it isn’t.

Jasmine climbs. Jasmine roots. Jasmine takes over the wall and blooms right through the cracks.

In my garden, it has spread over flowers, climbed up fences, claimed space. It is unapologetic and soft. It doesn’t compete. It becomes.

That’s what she is to me. Subtle and unstoppable. The scent that stays. The one that doesn’t ask to be let in but arrives, always, right on time.

Even her absence feels present. Even silence is a kind of holding.

She is not a friend. She is not a sister. She is not just memory.

She is jasmine.

And I am lucky beyond measure to be loved by something so wild, so constant, so entirely without condition.

This is not a tribute.

This is the truth.

She is the woman who gathered me.

Like the jasmine that took the wall.