You have awakened my heart

You have got me loving

You have got me hoping

I hope we never break up

You have got me envisioning

Suddenly there are pictures in my brain, pictures sent from my heart and borrowed from your eyes and your the-world-is-alright laugh

Suddenly there is a home for me, something I lost a long time ago and learned to do without, learned to pretend it doesn’t hurt

 

I hope we never break up

There are fat clumsy babies touching my face with part recognition, part excitement and part confusion

There are soft fat knees crawling and falling, tumbling:

Mamma?

The fatties are sticky and warm and smelly, and they pee, but I don’t mind because it’s…good, and I am Mamma

So, I hope that we never break up

Because I love the peeing fatties and you very much,

And you ask me why I kiss the peeing fatties so much; you ask me if it isn’t too much; you say I shouldn’t French kiss them

Is it wrong? Is that crossing a line? Is it not affection? I French kiss you to show you my affection, my love?

I don’t quite know how to show affection. I never learned. I am a Zulu and an awkward. I don’t know the lines, and when I was 9 my brother died and my mother told me he had been her favourite and I swallowed both my grief and my rejection very quickly and very hard and looked straight ahead, blinking only to not cry

Please, could we never break up?

I don’t know much about showing affection and expressing emotion, I am only learning most of it from how you say Shezi-baby

I am crawling and falling, tumbling and fumbling, like our clumsy peeing fatties

I am learning, I am resting my head against the closest that I can get to your heart; I am tracing joy with my fingers

And I am praying

Praying that you are still here when I get back, back from finding the things which I cannot name, things which I do not know but which never stop to keep me up at night. Dreams of rivers I feel I need to cross and huts I have to crawl into, to put things together, to find my people, to learn my story

Please, could we not break up

 

You have awakened my heart and changed my mind

And I have started to wonder, I have started to rethink, to question; I have started to shed

Baby, please, could we not break up

You can sometimes be unkind

You can sometimes speak with aggression, even when I ask you to speak with tenderness

You sometimes cut me off when I am making a point

You invalidate my contribution by hanging up on me

You shut me out

I think that we might break up

 

I am trying to shed, shed myself away, taking off the undesirable parts

And I shed and I shed until all that is left is newness and blind optimism and childish faith,

pleading faith

I am trying to be better, for us, but in becoming better I am becoming less, I am shedding myself away

And the fatties have grown thin; the babies no longer pee; perhaps they’ve died

And I am still shedding, so that I can be better, so that I can be palatable, so that I can smell the fatties again and once again trace joy with my fingers
I am holding on

I hope that we never break up

But you shout and I want to retreat, to go back to my place of oneness, where it is safe because the safe space that you promised has shattered and the thin fatties have disappeared

I am scared

I shout back, I shout louder

I hope we never break up

You talk more and more about yourself and listen to me less and less, dismissing me as often as you can

Your how are you and what are you up to and how was your day have become perfunctory

And I ignore this and swallow myself just a little bit and a little bit more, pretend that my spirit isn’t big, bigger

I ignore it and pretend that I am not great, that I am not move-mountains-on-my-own great,

I have started to leave myself behind

I have started calling myself heavy, and I am shedding

I have started calling myself untrusting, and I am shedding

I have started calling myself fearful, and I am shedding

I have started thinking myself unwilling, and I am shedding

I have started to say that it is my fault, and I am shedding

I have started to say sorrys that I do not understand, and I am shedding

I am shedding and leaving myself behind

I am shedding and losing myself

But it is not enough, there is not enough of me of myself that I can shed off shed away leave behind, for us to not break up

And if I could still get through to you, I would ask if you are shedding and swallowing and diminishing too

If I could still get through to you I would ask if you too are saying sorrys that you don’t understand, hoping that each sorry gives us a further step, until we can get over and get through

If I could still get through to you I would ask if we aren’t simply bad timing, if we didn’t find each other at an inconvenient time, a time of frustrations and changes

But you shout and I shout louder and we hang up

I think that we should break up

Why do we need this why do we need this thing which we need to be smaller for which we need to be less for?

Why do we need this thing which has us shouting?

Why do we need this thing which has you calling me negative energy?

What is it all for?

What are we ruining each other for? Weren’t we perfect when we were ruined alone, separately, without each other to highlight the ruin, pick at it, pick it apart?

I have shed and left behind but it hasn’t been enough

So we shout one last time and you leave

I had hoped that we wouldn’t break up

Writer: Nomfundo Duduzile Shezi