Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Out of Africa.



Like the legend of the phoenix
All ends with beginnings
What keeps the planet spinning
The force from the beginning

Open my eyes to a beautifully scary mountain range, the sun too bright for it to be in the same place as last night.
The birds too loud for them not to be sharing my ecosystem. 
The baboons too visible for anything to be real and my breaths too short for me to be calm. 
I wake up to the cleft in your throat, that point right above your chest that gives me just enough of warmth, comfort in a spot and a hint of your smell that I get to keep. I wake up to half shut eyes of you, an arm wrapped firmly around the small of my back, a pair of lips close enough to claim any part of my face that decides first to twitch away and a leg loosely locking my feet ensuring no escape. Claiming ownership. And you've never met a better slave to that. 
I let you have me, all of me, God knows I haven't let anyone but 'him' do that in a long, long time. What is it about you that made me bend the rules? You're the only one I've met more exotic than me that still seems to think exoticness is more prevalent in me. You hail from so many parts that I crave for myself, you've led so many different lives that only I can relate to the charm of, you're nothing of him and you're so much of me and yet you're you. Unpredictable, unreadable, incomprehensible, immature, intelligent, beautiful, silent, attention-grabbing, a merger and a stand-alone. You're a contradiction and you're too tempting. You're a trophy and yet I want to show you off only to myself. You make me envy anyone who's ever been a part of you, so I snuggle up just a bit closer to gather more and more, to be the future cause of envy...

Moving from a bustling reminder of my city, to a quieter place more fit for finding oneself and experiences that fill your heart, to peaks undiscovered that aid in you finding something you never thought you'd have the chance to find, I found you. Somewhere along the way you appeared and already made yourself unforgettable. I will despise you if you turn out to be another disappointment but I don't think I could ever hate you because you've given me a memory very few are lucky enough to possess. You've given me a night under a billion splendid stars, thousands shooting down just dying to beat one another to make my wishes come true, in that very moment. I can almost still feel the fresh gasps under my nose when I popped my head out of our tiny tent in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in the Simien mountains of Ethiopia, and the vast nothingness that stretched ahead of me, you and above us. 

I can still feel the importance rendered to me in that country by everyone I met, by every little girl I interviewed who told me she 'wishes she could be like a boy,' by every child in that blind school that would braid my hair just by the feeling of it, touch my arm and without actually seeing me, tell me I was beautiful when all the beauty that emanated, was from them. By every thought I thought, by every word I wrote, by every scorching afternoon I bore, every farmland I walked across and every real friend I made. It was stunning, it was touching, and then there was you. Every evening I'd flutter to you like a wasp to an untouched flower, like a magnet to it's very own magnetic North. The smoke that we inhaled and then exhaled were so different from each other, separated not just by seconds, but by a sentence in a life-changing conversation. By a feeling in a string of emotions, like one note on a harp being played by angels, because that's how I felt sitting on that bench surrounded by people in complete darkness and in a twilight zone, intoxicated. Yet all I could sense, was you. I hope you could sense me too.

Do you know why I didn't want to come back? I wanted to give you some more time to redeem yourself. To be not just who you were, but to be my best friend. To know little corners of me, just like I've learnt little corners of you. To want to flaunt the little crevices of me that only you hold the key to, just like I couldn't contain prancing around with mine. But precious or semi-precious, sunrise or sunset, cliffs or plains, whiskey or weed, stars or bonfires, food or travel, loud music or eerie silences, camps or dodgy hotel rooms, Africa or Europe, I will remember you. 

Whether you choose to stay or let go, I will remember you...
My gorgeous romance novel. 
:)

We've come too far
To give up who we are
So let's raise the bar
And our cups to the stars
-Daft Punk

1 comment:

  1. "To know little corners of me, just like I've learnt little corners of you."

    Beautiful story weaved in there

    ReplyDelete