It’s the week after Valentine’s Day. The streets are quiet, but the group chats are not. Expectations were either met, missed, or completely misunderstood. Some people are nursing heartbreak, others are back on dating apps with fresh bios and recycled photos. A good number are re-entering the market, so I figured I’d share a few stories from my heart’s archives—for your entertainment, of course. Something to keep you company as you scroll, swipe, or sit there wondering how you ended up here. Again.
I am back in this place again. Like clockwork, like a full moon that never misses its night, like a matatu conductor who never has change. There’s bubbles and warmth and mirth. Other things I struggle to find words for. Maybe a Hozier song can capture it better. It feels like walking through a large field of lilies in the morning as the gentle sun rays kiss the earth. Or poetry under the moonlight. I am watching the sun set from Tigoni, catching a sundowner while listening to Musa Juma’s Siaya Kababa with a stolen lover, holding hands like a stash of weed. The song captures the intoxication perfectly. Like all sad people, and those talking to the moon, I am a poet. I am a writer.
Here, hold my sanity, and my morals. Hold my fear too. Let me tell you about him.
Tall like the siala trees in Western Kenya. Sturdy legs and thick thighs. I could hold on to these. You know. Wink. Broad chest. Has a gut. I do not mind. Big head. Suffice to make him the head of the house. LOL. No hair on his head. Rather, a few hairs struggling to emerge from his scalp. Fighting. Refusing to show his age. There comes a time when you lose the battle with your hairline. He’s lost the fight. Large fingers like mangroves. Manly, as in he got hair growing on the back of his hands. Skin complexion like honey. Thick, thunderous eyebrows and lips like pillows. Pillows for lips. I want to lay my worries to rest on them. I have thoughts about these lips. A lot of thoughts.
He looks like a troubled angel; an angel with struggling hair (read bald), mysterious eyes and a mouth made for sin. He emanates warning signs, this guy. Looks like a tall drink of trouble and I want to take it all. A mysterious energy around him. A sensitive man; yet guarded. His guard is always up; doesn’t allow me to see him. I want to stare into his energy, but he remains elusive. On guard.
I see him when I close my eyes. At least, pictures of him. Vividly, like someone drew his face on my eyelids. I smile every time when I see my phone notifications from him. I get excited. The sound of his voice feels like a song I never knew I loved until now. The way he says my name feels new every time, like it’s being created, molded by his tongue, just for me. Our conversations leave me full, my brain races, my heart beating faster than it should. My soul years deeply. I imagine silly things, like how his laugh would sound in an empty room, or how he’d argue with me over which side of the bed is his. In my head, I have names for our pets and plants.
I have risqué ideas, spicy things, PG-rated that I cannot share here for the sanity of my readers. Like stolen whispers in dark rooms and the warmth of unsaid things. I have desires that call his name. My heart flutters when I think about him, about who we could become. About us. The energy is raw. And I would like to be soaked in it. That may be the secret. He may be the secret.
I remember our first connection. It was so intense it could make pigs fly. I heard his voice, and my throat got dry a little bit. You see, that phone call choked the air in my lungs. I was a goner, you guys. When I walked into this connection, I told myself, ‘No strings attached.’ Now I am in knots. The waiting, the revelations over time and the yearning for what I am certain may not be……I am slowly coming to terms with the fact that while he may give my heart flutters, he is a weapon fashioned well against me. Dangerous. It is a stupid affair to pursue this connection. Stupid games win stupid prizes, my friend says. He says not to overextend, not to betray my intuition. To focus on love that I do not have to try for.
It has been a while since I felt like this. Last time I did, I got butterflies. Turns out, butterflies are a protection response. My best friend says I got to be monitored. I cannot be trusted around this man. And he is right. He says I live in the beginning of things; I think there is beauty in the beginnings. In the conversations that start connections. In the acceptance that sometimes, we only get to be the people who exist in the margins, not the main characters. But even then, in the white spaces, our loves are still worth living.
I recognize that my heart is full in ways words cannot express. I am back in my body, fully in my spirit. I am surrounded by friends who feel like miracles and my heart has softened after a turbulent time. I am ready again. My heart is fluttering. It has been a long time since that happened. I am ready to put my heart out there. bell hooks says that the practice of love offers no place of safety. We risk loss, hurt, pain. We risk being acted upon by forces outside our control. Someone else, Leo Buscaglia, said, “The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow or love.” So, I am sending out my heart to risk, tenderly, with trepidation, like a murima babe tends to her shillings. Sending them out every morning with the instructions to return whole, or with more.
I wish I had the words to tell this man that I really like him. That we have an amazing connection. But you cannot make someone like you back. You simply surrender. You cannot defeat the way you’re feeling. You give it space to evolve. You say thank you for the time it touched you. You uncage it, then let it go free. But for now, take me to the lakes where all the poets went to die. Let me join them in scribbling longing onto stones, watching words wash away like unreciprocated love. I want to write poems about this man. Niseme, initoke.