At twenty four Mwila-An Kapapula had barely begun
her life. She hadn't lived to love and share her life with someone. She'd been robbed
of her fairytale and heartbreak story. All because I had shared my life with the
wrong woman. She could have been The One.
At twenty seven I had loved and I'd lost.
I kept replaying moments of what ifs. What if I had kissed her that night in Livingstone,
what if I'd told her that I'd loved her more than just a sister, what if we'd tried
to work it out? Maybe then I would have been with her that night that Samantha had shown up. I would have protected her or maybe if I'd never left for
Kenya in the first place. There would be no Samantha in the first place. She would
still be alive. Samantha. The name left such a bitter taste in my mouth. But if
I hadn't left would I have even been with Bison? Maybe it took me going away for
her to realize she did love me. If. Maybe. Too many unanswerable possibilities.
But Kundabene. She was still alive. She was
a figure of endless possibilities. Kundabene. Kundabene. I always smiled as I repeated
her name in my head. Her presence took me out of the now. It put me in a world where
it was just us two. The grief was always present, Bison was always in the air around
us but at the moment Kundabene was around me, the pain numbed a little. Kunie I
called her. She hated it, said it always made her feel like a silly little teenager
and not the grown woman she was. So spirited, it made me smile. Honestly, I hated
it too but the way her face twisted always put a smile on my face. I was always
smiling around her. I was trying to recall when exactly it was that I had started
to feel a warm, bubbly feeling for her. Must have been that kiss at the hospital.
It had taken me by such surprise, such a pleasant surprise. I still feel the butterflies
flutter when I think back to that moment. Funny thing is I had started to picture
forever with her. I had never previously allowed myself to feel such a way about
a woman so what was it about her? I couldn't put my finger on it. Maybe it was the
fact that she was the only person that shared my person with me. Mwila-An. My Bison.
Her Bison. Our person.
Going through her phone had revealed another
side to her I could not believe she had kept from me. I thought I knew her like
every line on the palm of my hand. But what I saw in that phone, if anyone had shown
me those messages and told me they were from her phone I would have laughed them
away. The person in those messages was... Anyway, more about that later.
You know you reach a point when you think
you're immune to heartbreak. You tell yourself; let me take a chance with this
girl, what's the worst that could happen? That's
how Kunie had made me feel.
Kundabene. Kunie. It still puts a smile on
my face. She was the only person I knew first hand that understood the grief. She
might not have known Bison as well or as long as I had but she did know her. We
shared in the grief (misery sure does love company). But with her, grief wasn't
grief. She had an amazing way of turning bad situations around so all you saw was
the beauty. But what beauty was there in grief? "The celebration of a life",
she said. The way she saw it, “crying
wouldn't bring Bison back but we have to find a way to continue her "legacy"
through our lives”. I actually rolled my eyes and smirked
the first time she said that.
"I don't believe in that silly rainbows
and butterflies stuff of yours."
"Don't be a Debby Downer Ishmael, I'm
trying my best here, the least you could do is try too." The pain in her eyes
made me vow to try my best never to bring it out again.
There would be moments in between our laughs
where there was silence, a comfortable silence, and we could just feel Bison with
us. She was there sharing in our moments, watching us exchange our happiest stories
of her; after all she had a significant part in who we had become as individuals
and as a couple too. We would never forget her. How could we? But we knew she would
not have allowed us to sit and wallow. Sitting there in that hospital room, alone,
was one of the worst times of my life. I would count down the hours till Kundabene
would get off work and come sit by my bedside, remove me from the world of pain
and just make me happy even if it was very temporary. I kept dialling Bison's phone
willing it not to ring next to me, hoping that I would be greeted with, "Guy,
what's the story?" But it never happened and somewhere along the line it was
Kundabene's number I would call. She never condemned me for it or asked why I was
calling, I knew hearing my voice was something she needed too.
I can't remember when Kunie and I officially
began dating. When it had stopped just being about Bison but when we had started
to actually become each other's person. I would call her in the middle of a busy
day to tell her about something funny I had just seen or vent about something that
had happened. Funny thing is it was a few months before I even thought of her sexually.
I wanted to know every corner of her mind before I knew every curve of her body.
I didn't want to objectify her like I had many other women in the past, to just
add her to the long tally of women whose names I had even forgotten. I know it sounds
corny but that was the man I had become, I was ‘whipped’
as the kids would say.
“A lady in the streets and a freak in
the sheets”, that was the perfect description of
Kunie. She was a beautiful, intelligent woman who never walked away from a challenge.
She was a career woman for sure, but she always said how the ultimate goal was to
have a family too. We had talked to lengths about 5, 10, 15 and even 20 year plans
and as ambitious as they were I could see her achieving them and I could see myself
by her side as she did. Her 5 year goal was to be the youngest female partner in
the firm where she had met Mwila-An. She said if not for herself then at least she
had to do it for Bison. I always admired how she had continued to keep Bison an
important part of her life, neither of us would ever forget her. She pushed me to
strive for better, not to get comfortable and complacent with what I had and for
a lot that happened in my life, I had her to thank. In the sheets that woman gave
me a run for my money. I thought I’d
seen it all with the numerous women I had been with but with every turn of her body
I discovered new heights I’d
never been to. I still can’t
believe that it’s possible to be that physically in
sync with another body. It just made me love her even more. That woman was perfect.
She was going to be my life partner, my business partner, my wife and the mother
of my kids. We would conquer the world together, that I was certain.
But even though all the good times we had
still more than make up for all of the bad between us, it’s
impossible to pretend there were no bad times. As the saying goes, “the
higher the rise, the greater the fall”
and after all the sex and illusions, the fall was nothing
I could have ever been prepared for.
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