I Give My Love Freely, but I Never Pay for It

Love has never been a currency to me. It is a climate. A fever. A field I run naked through, barefoot, breathless, unbothered by fences or flags. I do not ration warmth. I do not meter out affection by the spoon. I pour. I spill. I baptize. I write my desire across chests like scripture and wait to see who kneels. But I no longer pay. That is the difference. That is the gospel. That is the rebellion.

Because once — too many times — I did.

I paid in silence. I paid in wet pillows and tight throats. I paid in backbends and forced moans and pretending not to notice when he only kissed me in private. I paid in motherhood before menstruation, emotional midwifery for men who never learned to name their own needs but moaned beautifully when I named them for them. And I thought — foolishly, hungrily, like a girl performing womanhood from memory — that this was love. That giving was how you stayed kept. That sacrifice was proof of passion.

Now, I know better. Now, I keep receipts.

Sometimes, I imagine myself as a delicacy served to starving boys who never learned to chew. They bite. They swallow. They call it love. But I am not a buffet. I am not sustenance for the emotionally malnourished. I am the storm after famine, not the charity that comes before it.

Black women, we’re taught to love like mules. Like nurses. Like saints who fuck. We’re told that endurance is erotic. That holding everyone else up is holy. That being chosen is the prize — even if you have to bleed, shrink, or vanish to be picked. And I was good at that. I performed devotion like theater. I whispered “I’m fine” with the cadence of a sermon. I was soft where it hurt. Useful where it mattered. Invisible where it counted.

But desire? Desire cracked me open.

It made me resentful of the mouths that only knew how to take. It made me wild. It made me refuse. Not gently, not gracefully, but with a howl. With a slap of the door and a new lipstick shade. With a hunger I stopped apologizing for.

You see, I study love the way some study war. Strategically. Seductively. Exhaustedly.

When a man touches me now, I listen with my skin. Is this pleasure, or performance? Is he offering or acquiring? Is he here for the experience of me, or just the access? Too many have wanted entry — too few earned presence. I am not a goddamn visa. I am not a place to visit. I am a country you must learn the language of, slow and reverent, tongue-first.

I used to collapse into caregiving. I don’t anymore. I want to be held without a preamble. I want to be loved in my stillness. I want to be touched like a theory you’re still learning — carefully, with citations. I want to be devoured slowly, not because you’re starving, but because you respect the meal.

My therapist once asked why I gave so much to men who gave so little. I said, “Because it was the only way I knew to matter.” She blinked, and I wept. Because I had turned myself into a service, a utility, a vending machine of tenderness, and called it intimacy.

But love isn’t intimacy if it costs your selfhood. Love isn’t real if it demands your burnout. Love isn’t free if it requires your silence.

So now, I love like a garden — lush, untamed, abundant — but with fences. With boundaries. With warning signs that say: This is sacred ground. Tread gently or not at all.

I give freely. Lavishly. Voluptuously. I will write poems on your chest with my mouth. I will memorize your scent like scripture. I will worship your pleasure with the discipline of a scholar. But I will not pay. Not with my boundaries. Not with my body. Not with my self-worth.

And if that makes me too much, too intense, too alive?

Then baby, go find less.

Because this love, this language, this body — I give it freely. But I never pay for it again.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.