Perplexing Pegasus

19 September 2017 - The Pain Penned Out SANKOFA

Beautiful boy,
you never did quite understand the meaning of "I love you".
Not for lack of trying... no never.
Rather because "I love you"' has always had an undercurrent of vulnerability that frightened you,

demanded too much of your marred soul,

your scarred soul

that you spend so much time trying to cleanse...
Like paintbrushes in turps I watch you try wash out the essence of your soul in alcohol, you drown your soul in Hennessy, as if speaking those words out loud would be too much for both you and me.

See...

I love you...

to you has always looked like closed doors
and somehow sitting on your lap that night one was re-opened.
Re-awakened, somehow I felt your soul bleed into mine

and I haven't been able to cleanse myself of you just yet.

You cried that night in my arms,

disintegrated a little and I think you thought that I was seeing you at your weakest,

but babe...
Oh love I had never been quite as enamoured as I was watching you disintegrate because in that moment I was granted citizenship into the state of your soul.

War-torn,
in upheaval over a failed love.
The state of the nation that is you was under siege, from a mighty enemy named depression.
Aware of all your weaknesses, the enemy had laid siege to the mainland of your heart.
Crippled by sorrow, the soldiers of your soul lay down arms- unable to put up a fight.
Unable to produce fire rounds any longer.

Unable to hold formation of the facade you keep so well of being fine.
Unable to move in time to the war-torn anthem of late night binge drinking,

your soldiers lay down their arms at my feet.
And while your sorrow had decided to reign sovereign- enjoying short-lived spotlight- supreme,
I caught a glimpse of the little left of your heart.
Barely beating,
God...

barely breathing your chest heaved

up

and

down-
the sound of your breath the only thing reminding you that you were still breathing and though the war-ravaged on... you had called a truce.
You had waved the white flag... meekly before laying it over the bodies of broken promises and late nights that haunt you still.
And I know you're haunted... by what could have been.
Should have been.

And while I was granted citizenship into your soul, there is no road-map because the roads are laden with skeletons that I had carelessly yanked out of the cupboard of your heart trying to make sense of the little you have left to give.
I know you watch me trip and fall on gravestones in conversation,

secrets buried so deep that I get caught off guard every time one yanks on my heart strings in the rare moments that you slip up.
In the moments when your pain isn't buried quite deep enough

and this girl with eyes a little too brown has managed to exhume the past...

pieces of it.

Emotional labour on the landscape of your heart has left me tired.
Exhausted.
Recently I found a river of peacefulness which we call friendship.

Still waters,

rippling in the moments I remember how badly I wanted to believe you when you said you loved me.
How badly I wished you'd meant it.
Quiet waters of friendship,

and while petals of broken promises, of an unrequited love skim the surface,

it was more than satisfactory.
Recently, I've been surprised at how much comfort I draw from this stream,

bathing in it...
I began to float... Comfortable.
Unaware of what was to come.
Love...

why wouldn't you warn me that a tsunami was on it's way?
Because baby I'm drowning.
I'm drowning.
I'm drowning.
I'm drowning.
I'm drowning in you.
In your ambiguity.
In your empty promises.
In your beauty.
I thought I was drinking you in but somewhere along the way I began to drown...
I'm drowning...

One of your soldiers heard my cries.
His name was a drunken "I love you."
And I clutched onto his slippery hand as he pulled me,
exhausted onto the shore named 'I'm sorry'.
I have been lying ashore for a week now,
and while I finger the citizenship of your souls ID card called a whatsapp profile, with a barcode of an archived chat-
I've begun to wonder about intimacy, our safe space...
about this thing you always call 'us'

because there is so much u in us right now that somehow the sound of my sorrow has been drowned out by the overflowing stream of forgiveness that I have baptized you in weekly as of late.
My cries have been drowned out as I took you to heavenly heights,

hand holding, bible-open.
Eyes closed in reverence.

The same way that your eyes were shut the first night we spent together.
Weighed down by the spirit of a praying womxn you unravelled before me.
Every stitch of your being ceremoniously unravelled with each tear.
Each fear launched with each tear,
like a heat-seeking missile into the very core of my being-
received loud and clear.

Unravelled.
The cosmic galaxy that is you enveloped me,
stardust dancing beneath my fingertips as I pulled you closer,
stardust- fragmented and utterly beautiful.

Beautiful,
there is nothing despicable about your brokenness

for you are forged from Holy Spirit Fire and an Undying Love.
Those blue veins that I know you've been tempted to slit open house iron which is literally only found in stardust.
Millenniums worth of beauty flows through your body.
Millennia worth of beauty- locked in each one of your cells.
You are the living breath of Israelite slaves- son of a Lion.
You are the living breath of your ancestors.

You are a glorious, inhaling abyss
and while there are valleys of sorrow housed in your soul,
I have also seen Himilayian-like mountain peaks of your joy,
I have also caught glimpses of the road-map you plan to use to unlock the dreams locked inside your mind,
I have laid eager eyes on the valleys of wild roses that you have planted and watered named 'try again'.

Oh beautiful boy, you are so much more than the rocky hills of anxiety and pitfalls of 'failure' that you think has coloured in all of who you are.
You are more than your mistakes.
You are more than your mistakes.
You are more than your mistakes.
Oh ------- ------- you are more than your mistakes.

So with this last exhausted exhale I hand back the membership to the nation-state of your beautiful soul.

Realizing that there is no place for a pacifist like me in a warlike yours.

You called me collateral damage once - I now understand what you meant.

I hand it back hesitantly,

Handing it back
I realized that it was a visa,

perhaps a mere day pass for your season of need.
Perhaps I was just a visitor,

enamoured by both the light and darkness housed in your beautiful bones.

But it's time for me to return to my home state,
Called Corinthians 13.

Don't be too afraid to stop by.