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12 December 2018 | Story Mothepane Lebopo

The door closed. My eyes opened.

My dreams were halted as I sat up. She was already outside my window, the midnight moonlight lit her skin and erasing my fingertips on her arms. I opened the window… cold truth blew in. It stung my heart. She was going.

“Seriously? After four months this is how you are going to leave?”

Silence.

She was trying to control her breathing, to keep it as flat as possible. She had a unique, annoying gift of being able to compose herself in such situations, especially when she knew it was needed.

She stared at me.

My heart was pounding against my chest. In anger. In desperation. It had settled on her, but clearly she wouldn’t let me get close to hers.

I felt the first tear roll down my cheek. I quickly wiped away the second one. She just stared…

She could have been looking at me, thinking of other things. With her you never knew. She turned.

“Wait, please wait. Did you ever love me?”

She stuck her tongue out and left.

And I knew that was it: we were over. Thinking back, I might have known for a while that it was coming. But still… being prepared for something doesn’t guarantee your heart won’t break when it actually happens.

I left the window open, slightly. My head was spinning and my heart was tearing.

I laid on what was supposed to be our bed and dug my head in a pillow in an attempt to block out reality. It was useless; warm liquid from my broken heart poured out through my eyes. All I could smell was her.

But what was I expecting? It could never work. We were two puzzle pieces from different sets. Two pieces that were never supposed to fit… We tried to force it, and it ended in pain.

She was such an odd person. She had this ‘forbidden love’ thing about her. Being hers was strange, I knew she wasn't mine but I still tumbled head over heels. Being with her was like cheating on a diet. Or texting when you’re supposed to study.

She had beautiful, wild eyes that had perhaps seen too much. She got high on other people’s vulnerability. When her arms locked around me, she wasn’t just holding me, she was searching for pain. Insecurity. She would pin me down and kiss my nose. When she felt my guard coming up, she would tickle me and my power would leave me and enter her. She always won.

Often we’d try to watch the stars. I could never concentrate, her beauty was fierce and demanded undivided attention. She couldn’t focus either. She looked at the stars, not for their beauty, but for adventure. She looked at them as a guide.

I felt her hot blood in her embrace, she had to move to keep cool. There was rarely a still moment. Always dancing. Always moving.

I guess that’s what attracted me to her. I made her my adventure. I wanted to see what she had seen. I told her I was happy where I was but in reality I wanted to go everywhere she went. Wherever the stars would take her.

My lips only met hers when she was drunk. Perhaps she didn’t want to remember showing a little bit of emotion, being a bit vulnerable in front of me. But even then she rarely shared her thoughts with me.

So her secrets are still with her, while she knows mine.

That wild girl, may I never hold her again. She said she didn’t like it. She wanted to feel liberated. And my arms didn’t offer her that.

The girl with a storm in her heart had started a fire in mine and left.

I look out the window, where she had been standing. I almost smiled. What was I thinking?  Thinking I could fix her? Whether I love her or hate her, it makes no difference because she’s not here. She’s not coming back.

I will never know what exactly she wanted with me. But I’ll grow wiser from this.

You can’t teach someone who’s power hungry to surrender. You can’t mould someone who despises being held. You can’t put out a wild fire. Don’t try to pick wild flowers, because their thorns will pierce your skin and then they will wither because of your blood. But their scent will linger forever.

Now I know. You can’t tame someone who is wild. You shouldn’t offer your heart to someone who has sold her soul to adventure.

Don’t try to love someone who can’t be still.

 

News Archive

Renowned writer for Africa Day
2012-05-31

 

Attending the lecture were, from left: Dr Choice Makhetha, Vice-Rector: External Relations; Prof Kwandiwe Kondlo, Director of the Centre for Africa Studies;Prof. Ngugi wa Thiong'o; Prof Lucius Botes, Dean of the Faculty of the Humanities, and Prof Andre Keet, Director of the Institute for Reconciliation and Social Justice..
Photo: Stephen Collett
25 May 2012

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Lecture: THE BLACKNESS OF BLACK: Africa in the World Today

Audio of the lecture

Profile of Professor Ngugi wa Thiong'o (pdf format)

“Flowers are all different, yet no flower claims to be more of a flower than the other.” With these words Kenyan writer and one of the continent's most celebrated authors, Prof. Ngugi wa Thiong’o, delivered the tenth annual Africa Day Memorial lecture on 25 May 2012 in the University of the Free State's (UFS) Odeion Theatre on the Bloemfontein Campus. The lecture was hosted by the Centre for Africa Studies.

Long before Prof. wa Thiong’o was led inside the venue by a praise singer, chairs were filled and people were shown to an adjoining room to follow the lecture. Others, some on the university's Qwaqwa Campus, followed via live streaming.

In his speech titled the Blackness of Black: Africa in the world today, Prof. wa Thiong’o looked at the standing of Africa in the world today. He highlighted the plight of those of African descent who are judged “based on a negative profile of blackness”.

Prof. wa Thiong’o recalled a humiliating experience at a hotel in San Francisco in the United States, where a staff member questioned him being a guest of the hotel. He shared a similar experience in New Jersey, where he and his wife were thought to be recipients of welfare cheques. He said this was far deeper than overt racism.

“The certainty is based on a negative profile of blackness taken so much for granted as normal that it no longer creates a doubt.”

Prof. wa Thiong’o said the self certainty that black is negative is not confined to white perception of black only.

“The biggest sin, then, is not that certain groups of white people, and even the West as a whole, may have a negative view of blackness embedded in their psyche, the real sin is that the black bourgeoisie in Africa and the world should contribute to that negativity and even embrace it by becoming participants or shareholders in a multibillion industry built on black negativity.”

“Africa has to review the roots of the current imbalance of power: it started in the colonisation of the body. Africa has to reclaim the black body with all its blackness as the starting point in our plunge into and negotiations with the world.”

Prof. wa Thiong’o concluded by saying that Africa must rediscover and reconnect with Kwame Nkrumah’s dreams of a politically and economically united Africa.

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