the harder they are to pen down, write a kind of sketch of, the more disappointing it is. something that doesn't quite take flight. ends before it ever really begins.
he says, of course, "don't be too invested in this. why would you be?" and you're trying to make sense of what you are meant to have done with any of it in the first place.
the sugar-sweet things, all that cape town sky - so bloody wide open, blue and blue and blue that you can't quite find the line that separates the ocean from all its possibility.
the night you meet him (like most other nights you've met other men - god the long list and litany) you weren't meant to go out but you do anyway. a few men had looked at you a little hungry and you know it's a go-with-the-flow night, itching for a little chaos. an old warehouse turned into arts space that feels so very hackney or peckham of things. already had one too many drinks, piled on top of another (thank god you had stuffed yourself with bread at a wine bar). there is so little light. the room is heavy on amapiano and you sit smoking at a seat by those windows that only let a slither of streetlight in.
so when he walks into the room (and they always walk into a room) and sits next to you, that mischievous smile, you are already a softened thing. a fruit too ripe. then it follows and it follows some more. he gives the right answers and takes your hand up, leading you to a couch on another floor to talk and kiss and kiss and talk, whispering into each other. you try to resist with all your might but you're still that girl who gives into skin far too easily. you kiss him on a roof top and as he pulls you into him, you say yes and yes and yes.
perhaps that is always where you go wrong. the soft outline of spooning, when a man pulls you in so close in the morning asking you not leave. those threadbare offerings - dates, drinks, the cull of promises. you believe it for a few weeks where and when he pulls you into him, nestles into that sweet spot in your neck. the misses you and likes you and wants you. the don't leaves. the fleeting will you stay. come back come back come back.
giddy and foolish you are, strolling at sunset along a lover's promenade, watching him search for mussels in the rocks of that cold, cold south atlantic ocean.
It's always ending before it begins. a tik-tok creator claims this generation is "cooked". even the lover-boys aren't lovers anymore. always treading lightly, treading water.
he rides with you the day you leaves. calls often enough after, sends messages, goes all doe-eyed when he sees you. you pay attention to the contours of him, look out for moments you can see him - not as he presents himself, but those small revealing details. who he is, who he might be, who he is not. folds hidden, shapes that begin to take shape when you look hard enough.
a leap, right? a leap that what's you're looking for. an act of faith. someone brave to be brave with you. hungry. not the lust type, but that deep and rapacious hunger you have for feeling, living, being things. a man who isn't afraid to be looked at in the moments he thinks no one is looking.
he says "don't be too invested in this. why would you be invested?" like the last few weeks weren't weeks at all. just fragmented moments of nothing but silt washed away. like intimacy only has weight when you decide you love someone or something. when you decide it has value, weighed and measured up, quantified.
you had no idea he couldn't swim, that you weren't meant to get anywhere beyond the shoreline.
and like all things, all things in a hallowed and hollowed past. names that pile up each time. d. j. a. m. n. now another n. another body to a body count you can't ever openly tell men. another past. empty space. another only passing of time. all in your head. a fabrication turned cold. reality only ever coiled into its plasticity. yours versus theirs.
"don't be too invested in this. why would you be so invested?" he says before saying, for the millionth time, that he misses you. and for the first time in over a decade you realise, that unlike all of them, you are glad you're a full and living thing. heart and marrow and flesh and teeth and muscle, bloody and moving. all you've got. unafraid to give what's meant to be given in this little and tiny life.
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