Zimbabwe

by Tapiwa Mugabe

Forget dreams that make you old learn to make love without breaking what you touch.

I reminded her; ‘Stop pouring so much of yourself into hearts that have no room for themselves. Do not thin yourself. Be vast. You do not bring the ocean to a river’.

Do I tell her our love was young? Because little did I know hearts do not number days as minds do and my heart was an unreachable mainland.

I am not the sum of lovers I had or never had. As for lovers who left, consider them hair. Sometimes you cut it off for it to grow longer and more beautiful

You were born to be remembered, not missed. Being missed means you eat up people’s memory leaving them full of you but emtpy of themselves.

I want to tell my mother I have learnt a new language. Will somebody fetch her ear? I want her to hear how fluent I am in solitude.

Who will stitch my soul together?

My heart is a thousand waves away. My heart has skipped across continents today.

What voice? Tears wrote this. Pain bore this. When you are over-pregnant with fear this is what you give birth to.

And sometimes, you can’t help but fall in love with such a beautiful creature in a way you couldn’t even write about.

I waited for the day I’d stop caring about you. Waiting for the midnight I realize today I never wanted to pick up the phone and tell you about the funny thing I saw or about how busy and trying my day was.

How is it you make my heart so tender, and I haven’t given it to you yet?

So I tell mama not to worry, though my heart is wildflower I was taught a caterpillar’s patience.

Anagepesis (no longer feeling affection for someone you once loved) The morning you wake up to find she has packed. The afternoon your past becomes a long exhale. The evening you decide to stop writing about her.