LOVE BINDS. INTERMISSION OF MADNESS

"To Mwila-An,

Maybe I'm empty, because I leave pieces of myself in everything I used to love.
Maybe I love you, because I am not as empty when I'm with you.

Maybe I'm not as empty when I'm with you, because you're the best thing that's happened to me in a while.

Maybe you're the best thing that's happened to me in a while because I don't get out much.

Maybe I don't get out much because I see no need to.

Maybe I see no need to because for so long I've been swimming in a pool of nothingness.

Maybe I've been swimming in a pool of nothingness for so long because doing otherwise would mean me succumbing to things, which would mean me feeling again.

And I don't want to feel. Feeling is scary. Feeling is suffering.

Feeling is experience and experience is damaging.

It's just sad how I only now realized the beginning of this journey was when I met you.

It's strange how easily built the universe you placed inside of me was.

The same one, that formed the sky in my veins, 

the same ones that have been pretty stormy since your absence ripped them open.

It's strange and I'm sorry that when I breathe in, I often forget to breathe out.

I'm sorry that I sat so fast on this patent stone we said we wouldn't touch.

I'm sorry that I'm the one who doesn't understand the strings of his heart.

I'm sorry I scared you off into the sun,

A place so bright and full of rust.

That it's hard to sit, feel or trust.

I'm sorry, forgive me

and see you soon, my love.”

Never would I have thought that I’d finishing writing it. Loneliness is real once it hits you though. Especially when your best friend leaves you and it proves continuous with everyone you try to introduce your life to.

Loneliness. I miss my Bison. It is time to go and be with her. It is time to eradicate this loneliness. A bang on the door followed, and then slow muttering silence followed. Slow silence signaling death – or rather, the journey to my Bison.

"Ishmael, Ishmael, are you there?"

I am here. But I am not. I never once thought that the depths of my mind would be this dawning. Force full, even. Hmm.

My body has seemed to enjoy it though. My soul, body, spirit enjoy it too though. They feel aligned, like an institution. Wait, an institution? Hmm.

This institution seems to be swimming, with my mind acting the part of the stream and my body being the paddle. Does that make sense? I mean, it does, reassurance seems necessary. Does that make sense?

"Ishmael, Ishmael, stay with us!”

I am staying. In the back of a somewhat bleeping truck. But I am too far in my mind. The tides are so strong here hence my paddle's inability to corporate. The streams are deep. Deep like nothing, like something, like everything. Could I have just found the ideal meaning of nothingness? To feel it all while simultaneously being unable to grasp that which you are feeling? Hmm.

"Ishmael, Ishmael, are you there?"

I am here. In the flesh and in the real. I am still inside the body that I was taught to be with at all times. Why is your question a recurring one? You see me. With my wounds. With my cuts. With my openings. With my bruises. You see me.  Why is your question a recurring one?

I didn’t mean to,” I finally responded in an oblique, struggling tone. “It just made sense at the time and the time is now.”

2 weeks passed and there I was sitting.

I was sitting in a place where all the psychopaths of Lusaka went; here I was with cuts on my arms that metaphorically represented the puncture in my heart. Chainama Hospital isn’t quite like the Zambian public described. It was tranquil, underwhelming and erupted a feeling of solace knowing that everyone here, although dissimilar, were one and the same. We all connected. We all wanted to leave. We all sought nothing of the world except that beautiful muttering silence.

A familiar face started walking towards me. The scent of Chanel No.5 told me who she was. She wore white, like Lucifer and told me that it was finally my time to go home. Her use of the word finally irked my soul. What bullshit. I responded with a “How great, how very so great” but the look on her face from my response wasn’t very comforting so I asked, “What is it?”

She replied with a sigh, “You don’t talk the way you look you know. You look wise. ” My mother said and walked away.

What the fuck was that supposed to mean? Hmm.

Once I was home,

I ordered a box of hair relaxing cream.

I like this one because the results are not too strong

But not subtle either.

Soft like a baby’s bottom, delicate like its fingers

Like a virgin, easy to heave through.                                                                                                     

The box is small, it is dangerous.

A paste full of magic,

Abracadabra, minutes after and the kink is gone.

But like magic, it is not a complete solution

And then I need order another small, box of perilous.

I began to change my natural characteristics

The day I was blamed for being of colonial descendent

The day I was reminded why people have spent centuries

Trying to fit me into stereotypes.

Her shade of ignorance made me hug her words.

A statement of bigotry: the closest thing to touching white privilege,

Almost making me defiant of myself

A delicacy of distinction, an undifferentiated mass.

I lay my ear to her words to listen closely.
I am not biology.

I am the result of a visual reality, a history.

The box, it can be sent back.

My reality, it can’t.

Her epigraph riddled me.

Am I to sound wise because I speak a language of the wise?

Or because I have the face of Mr and Mrs Situmbeko.

Her insistence that color and sound correlate is what appalls me the most.

Unlike an aging wine, her words don’t fill me with glee.

They fill me with nothing.

Now, I put my fingers on the compartment of the box,

And I rest the contents down.
Magic dust, a wand and the spell guide.

I mix the ingredients and begin to massage my scalp.

I lather it on my head until I feel the curls dispossess.

Moments after, I start to look like them.

A darker shade, yes.

But similar characteristics

Hair of silk, shine, a new confidence to hide the bags of eyes.

I wonder if the silk will disguise the color of my cries.

Can I buy into the Zambian dream now?

Do I get a discount?

Have I leaped out of my ancestry enough to earn your approval?

Do I receive a pat on the head?

Or does the site of my unctuous African hands still scare you?

The disposal of the box was a platonic experience.

It felt like I was transcending into a higher being, a God.

A conventional white structure of the society

That doesn’t need alterations

In order to be bought.

I finished disposing the magic box

And went on to ask if I still sounded like a color or a face.
While seeking validation, something, anything.

I went on to see if the silk of my garment managed to serenade her;

To see if my hands belonged in cuffs even after.

She handed me a plate of rejection,

And then she stretched out her hand.

I simply refused to shake it.

I could not shake the hands of someone who believes that mine belong in cuffs.

The rejection was unsettling to my insides. It reminded me of all the other women that rejected me.

The rejection eventually digested,

And it felt like another platonic experience.

Only, it was a realization that the approval my soul craved was from within.

A realization that I would not get it from a box with magic

That makes you smaller than what you are.

It felt unreal, so I waited.

I waited for the sense of reassurance that my being seeks.

Nevertheless, my ability and access to find it were not connected.

It was off putting, I am not a Sherlock

I simply dreamed of wholeness.

It eventually came.

Not from within either.

It was a version of the magic box,

It was slimmer, less wooden form.

Still dark, dark, with an opening at the centre.

My walk to the pigeonhole catalyzed many feels.

I gained certain aggressiveness, a barely contained craziness.

I wondered if it was legitimate.

I wondered if the spark in my gout,

Was a good enough mount to climb on.

The mail arrived in the same place the magic box was in.

Attached, was my ‘reassurance’ card.

I didn’t know how to react to its visibility, but it came.

The receiver’s note wasn’t the common melancholic poem

With the company playing the protagonist.

It was centered entirely upon gratitude towards the mail man, Me.

When I first opened the envelope, my heart closed.

It closed shut with their hands holding the doorknob.

Only then did I realize how overdue this was.

Only after did I realize that all these months,

"Report to Chisamba for new employment,” the note continued,

Simultaneously leaving hints of the results of the card –

To remove and be free.

I erased every trace, every line and every ink stain near Me.

I undressed myself of the being life sewed for Me.

Thereafter was a freedom from the chains of the card's invisibility.

"Thank you and goodbye” the note ended.

This card unlike the magic box is not temporary.

This card, I believe, was Bison.
She was giving into societal masculinity by telling me to “man up.”
This card, like dry wine, like her, was bitter.
But oh man, did I need it.

This card unlike the magic box is not temporary.