Before returning to my beloved Sunnyside, Monde thought it wise to introduce me to Soweto, (South Africa’s most infamous township). I had a deeply rooted conviction that I would abscond and depart with a splendid story to disclose. But further off the dotted mark of truth, my arrow of belief has never landed. I left only with a few swollen tears to shed for my dear country. The houses they lived in, the schools they went to and the heroes they came to know. Society was neither grooming them for president-ship nor the ownership of the rare crown of greatness but for a trifling and petty life. How when they had fulfilled their stars, bred by their environment, we had the decency to blame or point our adverse fingers.
My heartrending spirit was awakened when ultimately I met the one soul, who would bring a thrilled and elated smile to my face. I had been wrong all along. In my mind, I believed her to be nothing less than a thing my heart ached for – the way a child’s heart aches for the sweetness of candy. But beyond that, I dogmatically categorized her as just another girl with a pretty face, pretty eyes and pretty lips. Although I had sensed that something special existed deep within my core when I was in her presence.
The universe in its vast complexity and incomprehensibility, sustains itself because everything, every piece of wood, every leaf on tree or every hair on head is at its place. This was how I felt when I was with her. Everything seemed to be at its place, the universe was at peace. There she was smiling at a distance along my way, shedding internal natural light to the now dark Sunnyside streets.
There was kindness in her voice. A soft kindness you cannot forge or mend from clay. She told me how she was studying to be a philosopher – a great thinker and one she was. The more she spoke, the more the dogmatic and overly skewed image that I had carried in my mind, evolved into its true form. Lu was liberated, in every sense of the word. She was not confined by the invisible cells of steel that continue to hold captive of most of our thoughts.
As we strolled, her and I, we spoke of the social injustices and economic challenges that hindered our beloved Africa from the fruits of prosperity. I recall a moment, while starring at her with bewildered eyes thinking, “There is one that understood me and shares my vision”. Our agreement was short-lived; like dog years, we quickly came into an argument about whether such a thing as destiny existed. She was a realist and I a romantic, believing only in what she could see or discern from logical truth. “Destiny is just another word for privileged coincidence” Lu would say, but I wondered if this was all there was to it, whether an incident occurred in her life that made her loose all signs of faith in destiny?
It was peculiar how one’s fortune could fleetingly change: the one moment I was in the cold heart of Joburg, drowning in Dark City; the next embraced by my beloved, smelling the Sunnyside air as if I were about to marry it and strolling with a dream on my side. There are things that require great thinkers of the past to grasp or solve. But, what was growing between us with every trade of slow words – that moved in the line that joined our moving lips –was evident to every man, dog and flying bird in the street. But less evident to us, when we realized it, I told her how I had an idea. An idea so sensitive so thin-skinned that it needs only be whispered from ear to ear, an idea, that we could be happy, an idea that we could fall in love. She smiled to look at the empty ground. “But dear Lu this idea cannot consume breath and come to life unless you share it with me.” It was a night blessed as I exposed the idea of bliss hidden deep within her when Lu shared my idea.
The next day, as it normally happens to most conversations, one topic mutated into another until we spoke of how vital and central a kiss was. Lu disagreed on the grounds that a kiss held no real significance. She held the belief that it was merely a thing. Like a town we pass to reach the city, it was not an end in itself but a means to an end. She also conveyed to me how in all her years she has never fallen in love. When I peered further; she divulged also how she thought she was not a fine kisser – staring down at the rough silent concrete. This could not have been true. If perfect ever did existed, it would exist in the carvings of her lips – in the smoothness of her tongue.
There was a singular path that brave men took to find this out. How this would ruin the now perfect image I had. There stood Lu, her divine face in soft hand with her eyes connected to mine; with that bright moon acting as a torch to light her face. Our lips then slowly met. I believe the wind then cried out and God woke to stare from up above as Lu and I reinvented the romantic kiss, the long lost romantic kiss. Still buried deep in my arms, feeling the rise of the ambient air I wondered, “Could this be it. Could my long and futile search to find the one we lived to find over?”
As a romantic, I always believed our sole true purpose was to find the one we would die to find. How when you meet them, it becomes evident that you had only barely began to live. The completeness of one’s soul never attained how one was all along a part of a greater whole: a piece in a piece of two. And words such as you or me would lose all form of meaning and only we would remain.
New love carries a heavy load that even the strongest among us is sure to feel tiredness at the knee. It is a sensation unlike any other imaginable to frail human thought. That feeling of unnatural happiness: compressed in a single instant in time. This was what I felt in the blue night after watching Lu shrink in the distant of the night. But would what I feel last till tomorrow? New love ends; even blissful honeymoons end. But I was thinking ahead senselessly as I usually do. The true horror which I should have feared was not the slow deterioration of affection, but a sneakier devil that snarled not far flung.
I had not written poetry in quite a while but she persuaded the romantic virtuoso within me to rise and write once more. On that blissful night, I composed a poem for Lu. Although something still troubled me, I could not tell or clarify with words what it could have been.
The next evening, although all parts of her that I could touch and feel were breaths away as she smiled – bewildered at the poem I wrote the night before. The intangible part of her eluded me. I could not feel it in our presence. She was highly cultured. Although I admired it, I felt it punctured holes between us, holes I could not fill with sand or mend with thread.
I was convinced that something had been holding her back to fall in love all these years. It was evident that it always existed the entire time like the soft silk sheets between us. “I know you have noticed,” she said. “I can see it in the way you look at me. If you ask me I will lie to you. Please don’t ask me”. As I looked down I felt like I was a falling in love with a dream: a thing you could wake up from; a shadow on the wall. And I feared the very worst.
A few months went by. I was glad when I saw her and sad when I didn’t. On one memorable day I recall us encountering an elderly couple sitting in the park. They were holding hands while looking into each other’s eyes. It was a marvelous sight to look at maybe even partially spiritual. They had occupied that particular bench at the park for more than 50 years – we later came to know. 50 years! Nonetheless they looked as teenagers who had just re-invented love. The birds in sky above felt their presence as they circled them once or twice.
I decided to join them in the hopes that perhaps within them lived the old age secret – one of lasting love: a thing as elusive as forgotten dreams. Perchance, I thought, I could lift this curse of temporary love off my-now tired shoulders. Kind and welcoming, they both were, not minding my extreme curiosity and inquisitive nature.
“How did you first meet?” I peered. A gloomy smile then filled both their old and wrinkly skin, fleetingly taking years off their faces. Even in old age you could not miss the beauty that lived in her face. She described Shaun as a man, a real man and nothing less than a man. The way he expressed himself and the way he moved was as the devil and a saint trapped in the same exquisite body. Women wished to have him – even in their dreams, while men wished to be like him. This was what they prayed for. She further explained how she had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide; like being trappe
d on a tiny island surrounded by his all-embracing presence. The devil who wore Prada was mysterious, intriguing and his sweet words melted her heart. Weakened her at the knees, while his physical features excited her eyes and amplified her body temperature. What choice did she have but to embrace of Shaun for eternity and a day?
Leaving the two loving souls on their bench, I was still insensible and oblivious as to how to cage and embrace tender love.
“You know who I compare you too, in history?” she said out of the blue, while we were walking away
“Who? Shakespeare?”
“No, yes there are similarities, but no, Casanova – the great lover. Think about it” She added
I had never thought of myself as a great lover, at least not wholly. Some things can wake with you in the mornings and sleep beside you in the evenings without you catching a glance or a peep. As I thought deeply of what she’d said, I realized the truth in her words. How I have never seen myself in the perspective of my loves. I started noticing the tiniest of things: how I stroked her hair or moved in musical bearings and gazed in hypnotic manner. I was a great lover, perhaps, the greatest lover to have ever walked the earth – a thing that was paired with my romantic genes.
But here I was, a great romantic lover still perplexed by the workings of Lu. She possessed rare and precious beauty the kind bestowed upon to the most precious of all living beings. This much was evident, but would I ever see the colors of her heart? Would she ever cry for me, live for me… or glow for me?
How could I have been so dumb and blind and not have investigated her culture before? I realized that from birth children were paired together in matrimony for life. Could I ever break the invisible bonds that I now realized held her mind? Opting for her, who to and not to love. It all became clear; destiny was not made for her. It was an entity which blindly passed by.
It was a Wednesday, I loved Wednesdays: sitting on soft green grass, not too far from flowers of different colors. There existed a form of joy within us; I felt her heart beat as vividly as I do mine, and I knew that the diversity of our hearts was but a trick of the mind; an illusion to the white eye. It was here were all dead flowers rose and my heart inscribed her name. I felt her love swiftly piercing through my skin, a feeling that I so deeply yearned. Her teary eyes could neither be controlled by mind, heart nor sinew. I remember she loved me when her face was a breath away and her lips were lovingly close.
“I cannot do this” she then said. Her tears had not halted to breathe. She was fighting something you cannot fight a thing without face. Lu cried for me.
“His name is Jack,” she explained and continued to tell how they were first introduced as infants – before she could even separate light from light. She was taught, much like young being taught religion, how to love him and only him. Lu grew up with less varied futures, but only one possible future: a life with the Jack on the hill. I was a man from a distant land and could not fully grasp and comprehend her thoughts.
I met my Lu on the worst possible of changing times. That very year she was expected to take his hand in marriage and spend eternity with a man that I now loathed. A man that now made her love to slip and fall on my fingers, slip and fall on my heart. The wind, I recall, was slowly blowing in our direction, continuously, (in the hopes of drying her tears I suppose).
She had a choice, she could stay with me. I tried to convince her. “If I don’t return, they’ll send collectors after me. Trust me; you don’t want to be around when that happens.”
“Then let’s run away. The destination is not important. They have cars and trains and planes. Let’s go somewhere – anywhere. I will love you in the trains in the planes, in that vast sea.” I felt as if my life depended upon her proximity, upon her closeness.
She believed me, at least for a moment’s while. She believed me. That was when her tears dried for me, and her smile smiled for me. Together we sat there to plan our escape. More excited lovers you could never find in blue earth. The plot was to buy a ship and sail around the world – to live like free men, to love like we lived in a fairytale. Out there, where there were no spears no arrows to aim for our backs.
When the night came we could not part, her hand refused to leave mine neither could mine hers. A few small steps apart were all we could manage, before the invisible springs pulled her back into my arms. Did the universe know that I’d never see her again? Did my heart know it would later die and bleed in vain? Was it scrounging for these last pieces of happiness? Now and again, she would run to me to expose the depth of her undying love for me. Lu glowed for me.
“Look at the blinking stars,” she said. “I will love you in the presence or absence of each gazing star. Gaze upon them when I’m not in your arms, you will see the truth in those blinking stars.” I did. I still do.
But the loveliness of summer night was neither made to last nor stay fresh in our hearts or mind or season. It was the last time I ever saw her. I heard varied stories. Others said that the collectors came and chained her to Jack; and, that they now have two daughters, two lovely daughters with their mother’s eyes – their beautiful mother’s eyes. Others said that she could neither be with the one she never loved nor let any harm come to the one she ever loved, so she took her own life to join the blinking stars in the night sky.
Perhaps one of these stories is true or none are true. One thing will always remain true, I hoped, and hoping still that one day I will gaze at the glow of my Sunnyside Lu
Chapter 5
My First
Love