Lamb or Lion?

2 June 2018

I took pen to paper for this.

I took pen to paper to try process this profound irony and the irony is this -

You decided to fuck with a writer and then had the audacity to ask me to hold my tongue.

"Bite your tongue."

I have bitten my tongue for months on end - hard enough to draw blood.

Blood nestled between these full lips that used to drive you wild, I have drawn enough blood to drink it in and choke.

So here it is - that word vomit that repulses you so very much.

They say if you don't get it off your chest you won't be able to breathe, but then again I don't know why I deluded myself into thinking you care whether I'm breathing or not given the amount of panic attacks you have induced in private.

And here's another irony -  you used to take my breathe away, in a different way.

It was something about the way you moved, occupied space, all-consuming but I guess I should have realized then that I was just ground to be conquered to you, territory to be gained in your war with yourself.

What was it you called me?

Collateral damage?

Collateral damage.

And that's  what you never realized that I was not ground to be gained - I am the promised land.

I am the land of milk and honey.

I am a gorgeous womxn.

I am a Godly womxn - and I don't think you know what that means so let me explain it to you;

I was forged beneath God's fingertips - heaven is imprinted in my frame.

Heaven occupies Earth in my form, but then again you are so riddled, ravaged by your demons that I guess you never learnt how to respond to heaven calling you higher.

You said I confide in my friends too much, but here's something I never said out loud -

I realized a while ago that I could never be the girl of your dreams because I fell in love with a boy more interested in finding himself at the bottom of a bottle than finding out who I am.

Here's what I never said -

I never told you that I am exhausted of falling in love with people who make me feel impossible to love.

I never told them how awful it is to love someone who makes you hate the fact that you know God because it means you know forgiveness and you interpreted my forgiveness as an inevitable - as an inevitable default button readily available for you to slam your fingers on when we'd find ourselves in the midst of situations too embarrassing to tell my friends about.

I never told them that I hate the fact that Kanye had to tell you that womxn are something to nurture not conquer.

I hate the fact that it took his words to make you realize this and not my tears.

I hate that you think I'm disposable- as if my parents' dreams on two legs are a doormat for your rehabilitation.

I never told them how I prayed "Father Stretch my hands" willing myself to be able to hold your brokenness in the palms of my hands.

I never told them how Jesus refused to respond - knowing that He's suffered enough for the both of us.

Insulted that I would even volunteer for such suffering as if He died for nothing.

Here's another irony.

You called me reckless and if that were true my name would be Daisy and I would answer to your call Tom Buchanan.

Tonight I write the saddest lines so you can call me Pablo, as in Neruda not Kanye and your friends can lament over how I "seem to have issues" and focus on that instead of tip-toeing around yours.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines and here is one of them, the profound ironies I spoke of earlier :

You love the album 'Views" as if it was written for you but you behave as if you're short-sighted.

You love the song 'redemption' but constantly inflict hurt beyond salvation.

You want all these people to know who you are as if you have a clue.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines as if you could read between the lines

And the line is as follows :

You sigh when the weight of the world mounts on your shoulders,

You sigh as if it's the only way you know how to articulate belated 'I'm Sorry's and swallowed 'I love you''s.

You sigh in evanescence - and that's where my love for you now lies, in a sigh.

It is in that sigh that you may or may not realize that I could never be contained in the confines of your now fading memory.

I can hear that sigh now as I write this, a sigh giving birth to the realization that our Lazarus love has finally been laid to rest.

I lived in Lazarus love for you,

As you were well aware,

of the fact that I would suppress it,

bury our love beneath heaped mistakes and half-hearted attempts at walking away,

only for you to call my name and resurrect any glimmer of hope I held in us.

But I forgot that you’re not Jesus.

Nowhere near Him.

You never did have the strength to learn the love language of a walking corpse.

Risen from the ground.

Ashes to ashes dust to dust – the magic of resurrection frightened you.

I mean how could you ever wrap your tongue around the words “move on my love” when the murmur of a Lazarus like Zombie saying “I love you” was so much more tempting.

In that sigh, I can hear it distinctly in my mind, understand my love for you has been laid to rest - but I have not.

I said earlier that I am a Godly womxn - which means that the same resurrection power that lived in Christ lives in me,

I guess you'd call it resilience.

So in that resurrection magic, knitted beneath my flesh, I promise you this :

I will love again.

"Rise and rise again until lambs become lions." - that's one of my dad's favourite quotes - and I finally get it now.

I am the daughter of Judah, Jehovah.

I am both lamb and lion.