Dear x,
i
When dawn invades the darkness that is the center of your soul, and you call out to me with thorns on your lips, please learn that joy too, is a kind invitation. The kind that is capable of enveloping a vacuum till it becomes warmth. If you call my name without thistles, my answer will unravel in a loud whisper and a shy moan. There is a tenderness with which you beckon a woman with whom you share your nakedness; You call her without the wound in your spittle. You have asked me why I don’t undress when I am aware of our desire to devour each other, and I have told you that there is magic in the unveiling. Mutual tension should be the premise for intense lovemaking. Imagine the beauty of morning light behind curtains. Here, my body becomes drapes and I wish for you to part me open with eyes that want to consume the morning, but you refuse to see me with your heart.
ii
We have spoken of the cross together, and how it signifies our differences. How it has become the premise for annual festivities, a time for love. Say, – if we let our affections die, it might rise again on the third day and save the world from heartache. Does it matter to you that a part of the sun is green because my jealousy is becoming an orbit? Do you know that a woman’s body is made for worship and each denomination has a new song? Against the temerity of my mother’s hustle, I let you into my wholesomeness, a place where you can be faithful with your faithlessness. Even in this right of passage, in this dignity I have sacri1ced, you choose to crucify
me by planting wild kisses on another woman’s breath. My love for you is as tender as goosebumps and 1erce as a fanatic crowd. I warn you to come home to me because we are all going to hell in another person’s religion, but you don’t listen. I guess 1re is a debut for warmth, and you always choose to risk combustion.
iii
When you are in love, there are things you don’t need to establish, and sometimes the things that are implied are deeper than things that are outright. Do I have to explain that two heated towels on Christmas Eve means my body needs prayer and your frame is the only congregation I want an amen from? I am never shameless about wanting because I am unlearning the shame that grew on my skin for existing in my own body. If I shrug when you ask if I will be coming to a party with you, it’s not about tiredness more than it is about you drinking your booze at the far end of a room full of fun, as though we did not just take a cab together. When I prop my phone for a sel1e and you hide your face behind my neck in the name of planting a peck, I look at you like a bottle lost in the ocean. If you have ever cared to look deeply into my eyes, you would see that mystery man is not my fetish. A love that is not festive is not worthy, but worth can quickly be twisted into crumbs and you know what your crumbs do to my famished heart.
iv
The rain is as consistent as the water you draw from my eyes, as constant as the neighbor you now call a demon—the one who starts a greeting with his dentition and calf on display.
v
I want to talk to you about the premise of trust. There is trust that comes from love and it’s the one my mother has for me, the one I broke by bending over for you, then there is trust that comes from laxity and it’s the one you have for me. An underrating and laissez-faire kind of trust that defrauds you of the possessiveness that should come with commitment. It’s why you assume that the gestures and invitation of a demon are out of pity and not the desire to woo. I do not know any lover who is not suspicious of advances except you. What is yours, is yours is the most untrue cliché. Whatever love you choose not to cherish is just an experiment.
It started with housewarming gifts, shared meals, and ambiguous text messages. Now a hug, and a reciprocated kiss, now a subtle affair, now full-blown heart-wrenching love.
vi
I write this note to thank you for the insatiable. To bless you for starvation – oh blessed are they who hunger and thirst, for they shall be filled with love as beautiful as poetry. I am also shocked at your anger. Where I come from, revenge is solely of the Lord and if he says your reparation is my shameless love, who am I to speak the contrary?
Say me well to your wildowers. Tell them a rose left her thorns in your chest to blossom in a new garden and she will not be returning soon. I am worthy of this kind of rebellion and May your ego 1nd you new shelter.
xx
