My love,
35 days.
So of course I haven’t forgotten and moved on. You linger. In my thoughts, in my memories, in my desires. I haven’t known you all my life but your absence feels heavy.
I had promised myself to forget and move on. There was a plan, a strategy, with dates included. For a brief moment, I could glimpse a future without you. Telling myself that I deserved someone who could be brave with me.
But you linger.
35 days is not long but it feels like an eternity.
I miss you in your entirety, the parts I adore, and the parts I can’t stand.
Should your absence always hurt this badly? I honestly never expected it to rip into me this deeply, this cleanly. It’s almost unbearable, which is borderline insane.
I feel your absence acutely. In the spaces, you used to occupy and in the things your fingers once grazed. I am beginning to think that it will be impossible to forget because it seems like you leaked through everything.
I feel stupid. I feel stupid because I long to see you. It’s a dull gravid sort of longing that never completely seizes.
I’ve heard that time will heal the cracks. That time will eventually brush you over, but thinking about your absence in my life ten years from now breaks my heart, again, and again.
I hate to say it, because I’ve always found it absurd. But, I can’t live without you. My life without you, it is, I don’t know, lacking, infuriating, lonely? I miss you.
So today, after 35 days, I’ve decided to throw away my pride, offer myself to you, and hope it’s not too late.
Reconsider us.
We weren’t together for a long time. I don’t even think I have been your longest relationship but, we were good together. We were great, weren’t we? You made difficult things seem easier, and you made lovely things seem magical. We didn’t have all the answers when we were together, but that was okay. We could talk about whatever we wanted while we figured it out. And we could tease Doris about her jollof rice. Big moments, small moments, they meant more when I could share them with you in some way.
I know it’s not what you had imagined for yourself, being with me. You probably dreamed about a wife, children, a house, and maybe a cat. I bet you dreamed of a life like your parents.
I am aware that when you chose to be with me, as discreet as it was then, it could have eventually cost you your family, some of your friends, even that shitty friend of yours Marc, but reconsider us. I know it’s not really fair, asking you to risk it all again for me. But choose me, choose me again, this time, a little more for forever.
There was a time, not long ago, before you decided that we didn’t have a future, when you would hold me tight, and tell me that I was the best thing to happen to you. You would tell me that we were worth fighting for. You made me believe that we could get through anything, as long as we were together.
Then you left. You left us.
I have been angry, I have been distraught, but now I just miss you. I am left with nothing except the questions. They run through my brain a lot, during peak hours, and slow hours of the day.
“Why aren’t you here?
Don’t you miss me? Do I ever occupy your mind? When you close your eyes, do you ever see me? Probably not all the time, right? But sometimes? Often? Always?
I wish I could hate you. I wish I could want nothing more to do with you.
But I couldn’t hate you anymore than I could hate a piece of myself that I cherish. If I told you that in the time we were together you grew to be a part of me, would you believe me?
I’ve been thinking, really thinking.
A love like what we have, doesn’t deserve to just fade.
I have been thinking that maybe you are also aching for me. I could always read you well, and always intuitively knew how you were. So God, I hope. I hope with everything that we ever were that I am right.
If you are not strong enough. I will come to you.
I know what kind of story I want us to be. A story that ends with me and you, old, maybe a little tired of each other, but together.
I have also been thinking of how best to convince you to reconsider. My inspirations come from 90s American white teenage movies. So be thankful I chose this instead.
A letter.
I remembered how romantic you found those.
Next, I thought about what to say.
You were there for our story, so you remember how breathtaking it was; so, I can’t use memories to convince you. It was you who shed my doubt about our right to love, so I can’t use that argument with you either.
I’ve been agonizing on what words to use to pull you back.
It’s hard. I have never done this. But I refuse to move on without you.
Rosa advised me to take a Polaroid photo of myself naked and covered in your favorite food, and I almost considered it. That’s how much I want you back. (Calm down. There is no naked photo in this letter).
This feels like a scene in a movie. But I know life isn’t a movie. Remember how often I would tell you that, especially whenever you would dare to talk about the future. It didn’t feel right to imagine so far. In my experience, love like ours couldn’t survive the hate. Time and secrecy wore it down and turned it into pain, regret, and sometimes death. So I wanted us to be realistic. I regret that now. I wish I had painted the future with you. I wish I had allowed you to pull me into your dream.
Now it’s my turn. I am trying to pull you back. You have always been smarter than me, so I am betting on you.
I can promise that if you take my hand, I’ll keep holding it.
So. Let me tell you something. I know you love space, and its wonders. So, me, never being a poet, or a wordsmith, I want to tell you something in a way I know you will try to understand.
We are just flickers among millions and millions of other glimmering light. We disappear and are quickly replaced. There are rivers of us—specks floating in an unknown vastness. We shine and then we blink out, and another takes our place. Our lives are infinitely short, but meaningful. So we matter, each of us. We are a piece in the answer of the universe. We are a word, a sentence that forms the story of the universe.
Who we are, and what we do is important. Our world is not our limit. We are beyond that. We exist alongside galaxies. So my love, we can’t be bound.
We are powerful.
So why can’t we shine bright? Why can’t we be free? Why can’t our story enrich the universe? Why does it have to end my love? Let me continue to love you. Let yourself continue to love me.
Reconsider us.
Love,
Kwame
P.S I got a cat. Her name is Sheba.
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