interruptus

“Can I ask you something?” I had finally found my voice. My lover did not startle. She sat naked opposite my own naked form. Our legs were intertwined in a helix, so that our chins rested almost on the other’s shoulder. This comfortable position was familiar, after hours of endless lovemaking, also that we each could scroll our phones privately was a bonus. I felt her right hand rest on my lower back just as she let out a ‘sure’ cloaked in a deep sigh. She did not turn to face me, instead, her fingers started their ceremonial dance along my spine. I wanted to ask, in fact, the question was already on the tip of my tongue, that was dancing with hers. She lay on my back in one swift motion and for a minute or two, I was still appreciating the smoothness of that move. Her hand stayed under me, now cupping my cheek, now lightly touching, then spontaneously slapping, sometimes in contact, sometimes travelling up the side of my body to my neck. Her other hand always stayed at t...

The way I walk, with my body slightly tilted to the right and my head upward in a proud stance holding a resting bitch face, may seem peculiar until you meet my mother. I get from her also my uneven smile, my zero eyesight, my laugh, my body and my life. I can draw up a very short list of women who would give me a part of their lives like my mother does. There are also a few decades between us, a few fights and unconditional love. There is not enough English alphabets to explain my love for her. It was not always like this. There was a time we went days without meaningful conversation, when I thought she was done teaching me life's lessons, but she kept loving me; Through my weird puberty, my confused adolescence and she still did when I brought my first girl home. She walked away from all her ideals for me and she has played the role of mother and father to my little brothers. All these things she has done with not a single groan, with the focus and competence I hope I inherited...

There is that one person we can swear our love by. There is always that heartbeat that you could listen to on repeat for your whole life. There is that one human whose existence is the reason for yours. They might be the one you go home to every day, or maybe the one that got away. I have a love like that, they were my bane, my existence, my every next breathe, but they were also the one that ran away. They ran.  Their name was Don. Don was a cocktail of intellect and beauty. We spent hours talking about Philosophy, Religion, love, music, our dreams, Their hair and pain in equal measure. The beauty of her light skin and baby soft hair was a bonus. When Don smiled, my world lit up. We had very few hours together really, but I remember every minute of it, all the places their body would meet mine, there still is a simmering sensation. Every morning text is engraved in my mind, every echo of their laughter haunts my house. There was no moment in the 12+ months we were together when ...

I  was convinced my phobia for men was all in my head. This was after countless speeches had been made to my benefit by the friends in had gathered around me in high school. I was 15, physically mature for an eighteen year old and how my mother prayed all this matched my brain. I had been convinced i needed not to freeze every time a man said my name or to rudely brush off the boys when they came professing their love. Even my therapists agreed, I was to act my age, they said. I was to have a normal teenage life they said. The problem was i was already past the teenage life. Every man was a means to quench the fires that had been left unattended inside me. Every touch reignited the flames so fast I had time only to convince myself that I wanted more than their idle words, that I wanted to feel flesh consume me, bury me, cover me. And even then, as our bodies would mold together my mind would be plotting the next time, the next place, the next how. It was  a never ending cycl...

I have lived in my own bubble cushioned by my feminist, Afropop, LGBT+ views. up to now, i have lived within whining distance of people with my same skin color, music taste and sexuality. I have recently found myself in a small town, in a house with four people from places different from mine. Don't get me wrong, an Australian of Italian bloodline, a British couple who have been friends eight years and a South African Brit are lovely housemates. I am more worried about the crazy African opinionated housemate I am. In short, these four people have schooled me on humility. In that order, is the vegetarian who fell out of her wagon. She is always on the phone with someone or cleaning after us in her skirts and halfway shirts, much to my delight of course. And then there is the beard boyfriend who sits silently nodding and smiling, occasionally interjecting, always with something funny. His girlfriend listens with her eyes. She is practiced in the art of conversation and it never get...

Back in high school, just before our final exams, there was a sudden obsession about waistlines.it was the emergence of the crop top (begins every curvy woman’s nightmare). I was the small population that looked through the glass. I have almost forty inches on my waistline. I stopped measuring a few years ago when I decided the world cared enough for me to just chill. I Outgrow my clothes rapidly still, and I try not to care that my friends fit the same clothes for years. I try not to care that they can share every single item. I fail at loving myself, a lot. My YouTube home page is pages upon pages of how to lose waist inches overnight and inventions like these (they don’t work btw). There was a time I would rock my waistline when I did not give two shits about what I could or could not where. Then came the nights out and the late-night dresses. Nothing would fit me the way I wanted it to fit, mostly because I wanted more to change my body than the dress I was wearing. I ha...

"As every other person." This was a default answer to a question I had been asked countless times in high school: How do you see B? But now i was sitting with her beside me in the counsellor's office, answering a different question: What does she make you feel? The truth is I felt fleeting things, twisted, raw, primitive, soul snatching, heart squeezing, breathtaking, nail biting, toe curling things. I felt world ending, cupid inspired, sex driven, hot rising things for this one woman but i was not ready to say it out loud, I was not ready to hear it bounce from my lips to my ears. I could not bring myself to tell anyone else that every breathe this beautiful human drew was another swell of love within me. I was not prepared to be dumbfounded by the very thought of confessing that this one human held together my very sanity. I was not ready to feel the pangs of emotion that came with such utterance of vulnerability. I was not fit for the battle that lay within a simpl...

My voice has finally been amplified in this day and age. It feels refreshing to see movements like the #MeToo sweeping across the globe. I recognize and applaud(very loudly) the women who have chosen to speak up especially in Hollywood where reputation is everything. I am with these women in spirit and in soul. Their stories have worked to introduce into conversation the injustice that is rape .I am late in commenting, because i am practiced in the art of patience, in this matter at least. But I have read only a handful of articles and statements by the perpetrators in question. Their comments and words have been kept to the minimum even to the public. Some of the suspects still work in the business and are protected by brand names and law suits on top of the other.  This is a clear glass through the context of my society. The African society has commented ever so lightly on the issue. There has been only whispers on it, no matter how fast we retweet or how loud we speak out, abo...

The world was blown away by a fem positive revolution around 2010/11.My little world at the time was taken by storm by Oprah and Ellen. I decided i had found the word i was looking for. To hear an echo of what was my story from a woman of color and a queer woman both from the across the globe inspired me. I made the mistake of speaking the word to my father. It was at a family dinner, he had just served himself the lion share(oh the African culture) and was settling comfortably into his seat.I turned to my mother and told her we had learnt about rape at school that day. My mother did not miss a beat, she said " That is not table conversation." The very next day and every day after that there was a cold knife on my neck when he came to take me. I realize that I had been captivated by the success stories. I had looked past the process of coming to terms. I tried again, when i met my first girlfriend five years ago, and this time I was ready for the hurt, confusion, guilt and...

  There was a whole flow of events set in motion the day I was born. Just like it was for my mother and her mother before her, I was to be raised to be a lady, a wife, a mother, a little of a leader and an all round confident woman. In my early years mother did her part. She nursed me and kept me with her in the kitchen, she occasionally took me to work with her so i could learn the value of an education, she recited stories while i played at her feet and taught me how to care for my younger siblings. With time she taught me that the inside of my body was alive and that i would one day bleed from it. She explained the miracle that is bearing a child and then delivered the stern warning to not dare try. I know, this the chorus to most girl child upbringing. Mine was punctuated by the teachings of my pastor father and my inherited religion every so often, by the time i was eight i had a special sermon to keep the boys away. After that was expected the actual exercise of keeping the...