My first Love Charlie.

So, I wanted to ask myself about me and …… I hesitated because I was going to get disappointed about how much I don’t know myself. But I did anyway.
Am a boy raised from the hills of a beautiful green place with people wiser than they seem to look. I have a dog named Charlie and a cat I really never named because no one taught me that cats were named. Everyone calls her Pusi, so she’s pusi. Every other cat in my neighborhood is pusi. I never met my grandfather. None of my siblings met him either. On most evenings I stare at his picture hanging on the walls of our village house and that’s all we have of him. Our living room is a collection of my mother’s locally made fabrics ‘ebitambara’ that are used to cover the cushions in the chairs. Those chairs are as old as I can remember. They are assembled in a way you cannot forget and the pattern never changes. I guess it’s because we still have the same mother. The table has changed…twice. The first time it changed was when I cut one of its legs with a panga to use the wood to make a motorcycle. I was amazing. Wasn’t I? The second time my brother poured paraffin on it and set it ablaze. Amazing kids! Thank God the fire didn’t burn the whole house down.

The ceiling of our sitting room was provisional. It was made out of mats. Big brown mats. And the walls were stuffed with newspapers that my father used to buy on a daily basis. 0rumuri and new vision futured the most, and Entatsi which my elder brother liked a lot because it had a lot of adult content was rare. My father never missed coming home with a newspaper after work. On the far corner, sat a Tv stand with no TV, a metallic box where we kept our report cards and a heap of my elder brothers art work. It was a messy but the most beautiful chamber of the house.
My grandfather’s black and white picture was hanging above my father’s favorite chair, whose extra end had been fabricated to accommodate his Panasonic radio. He sojourned there most of the cold evenings. I never knew any other brand of a radio as a child. It was Panasonic and nothing. 

My grandfather had greasy eyes. There was something about his picture that I never figured out as a kid. It was disrupting. When you stare at him for so long, he looks like he’s crying. That’s how his eyes were. Greasy, teary with a lot of emotion sprinkled all over them.
His face was long shaped with a nose pointed as anger. At least I know where my long face came from. You can tell he was a tall man by looking at his jaws. My grandfather was handsome. I still don’t know if he was Tutsi or Hutu. But by looking at my father, I get more confused. He seemed a religious man with an urban fashion and must have liked keeping his hair tender and longer for a regular Rwandese man. I really like him.

My grandfather married a wife from the village where he resettled. He came as a shamba boy of Rwakityokori - a village chief - who later allowed him to pick a wife from his area and marry. He went for a dark-skinned lady with pretty eyes and an infectious smile. Her picture lies just besides my grandfather’s. I don’t remember her with black hair. She always had grey hair and liked cooking. It was always a feast at my grandmother’s house. Her house was bigger than ours but looked older with a finer finish and a larger living room. Her chairs were more artistic with shinny little cloth decorated as my mother had assembled ours. It had the similar feeling but a lot cooler and way more ‘foodier’. 

My grandmother’s face looks calmer in that portrait. She was more curious in person and that gave her the ‘I-can-see-through-you’ look. She was as effortlessly beautiful as she was disciplined. Her dresses were always floral with succulent senses of style. She must have been a teacher. I don’t remember.
My grandfather's roots are in Rwanda. We don’t know much of his people or perhaps we are only his people. He left Gikondo as a young man looking for work and returned there as an old man looking for his people to merge with his family. We never saw him again. We never buried him. Or well, I wasn’t yet born but I know that he didn’t have a decent burial. Guns are still turned on the Genocide……………………

A speaking heart

17 days…. 408 hours… 24480 minutes is the time I have spent without talking to you.
I thought it would be more than that but apparently am a liar. Staying away from you is something I thought I had to do. Something I thought would break my craving for you but I just found out I can’t fast long enough. I don’t like it but am pretty sure you enjoy it. I have always thought time heals all wounds but it doesn’t reach the ones foot-printed on the heart. So, my wounds still ache with 1,468,800 seconds of silence that I have given to myself. If the prescription for healing is ghosting you, then I won’t heal because I have failed on an under dose.
I started with deleting your number but I forgot that I had deleted it so often to get it in my head…digit by digit. I remember the days when we would be more than friends, I would re-save it into my phone book. Then things would change to friends and I would still maintain it until when I call it and you yell at me and tell me never to call you again, and then, I would delete it and wait for the day we are more than friends again, to save it.
I used to think that you were treating me like this because you were unsure of your feelings or you didn’t hear me well the first, second, third and tenth time I said I couldn’t live without you. But now I know. You never had any feelings at all. You heard me all those times but the monster in you wanted to feed. And am like a goat that eats around a slaughter house. Your charm still confuses me; one minute you are all mine and the next you are none. So, I admit that am in a process of not unloving you but a process of trying to be fair to myself because I have lived long enough holding onto something that will never be. And I have one more thing for you before I say goodbye_. I don’t like alcohol but I still drink it. I don’t like you either. And am not sure if I won’t have another ‘one more last thing’ to say to you by morning.
Love Albert

Boys don’t heal

I remember our Sunday evenings. Sitting still and doing nothing and everything lovers do.
On Wednesdays, we would go eat out in the dark shades of the cafeteria.
While on Fridays, we would go dance the night away.
But now,
Now on every Saturday, all I remember is your back. Leaving me.
Every day is just every day.
So last night I drunk to get one more day to seem like our Fridays
And as I picked socks from the floor this morning,
I remembered our drunk nights and how good you were;
At abandoning clothes…. and hearts.

Cassé

All I remember are the panic attacks that I got whenever I found out I was being cheated on. The tears. The rage. The ignobleness. And I would never walk away. Because I love a little too much to let go. By the time I walk away, I have been broken to pieces.
Why do I have to love so soon?
Why do I have to love so hard?
When do I learn to let go?
It takes me 20 minutes to fall in love, And a lifetime to get out of it. I feel like everyone my way has a love with a price to pay and I have over paid the price. So, day by day, piece by piece, am wrecked into small bitter knobs and I need to pick them up and reform my life for another man to break. Love, Albert

Hello Grey

This is to remind you that you were once my favorite color.
The texture of your skin was dark enough for the brightness of mine
The way you stared at me made me beautifully sane.
You were more real than black and more composed than red or pink.
I loved you.
I loved you more than the evening skies, until,
you became less like grey and more like white.
And you couldn’t hide my dark emotions anymore.
Every time I cried on your shoulders; the whole world saw a print of my lashes on your hue.
I got exposed.
I found it difficult to hate you. I can’t hate you. I hate having preferences.
So, I repainted my bathroom and changed my curtains
I gave out my jackets and everything that reminded me of you
And I stopped seeing color.
Because color reminds me that I once had a favorite.

I broke me

I broke me

I chose your toxicity

I breathed your air in the mornings

I stared at your yellow skin turn grey.

I validated your mistakes

Just because I thought,

That one day i will be your right

Or perhaps in between my trying

You may finally see my ilys,

Am still nothing but an almost…

Dopamine

I place my chaos in solitude such that i can blink. The world rotates inside my head – i feel. On some days i can touch my lungs while on others i can’t feel my brain. Danzo tells me its a rhythm of life but i lost the tempo years ago.

My phone, my phone is my only friend. It replaced family and friends. if at all I had any. I feed on its company and the anxiety it brings. Online became my therapy and I would be a liar if I said its not completely destroying me. Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp are friendly. Instagram is demanding.

On sober mornings I wake up to greet my lover, my iPhone. There’s a few comments on my Instagram – sheer lies of how beautiful I look. Samuel has 100k followers and the 365 that I have, still lie to me. Some abuse me. Some notice just only the imperfections. Samuel is in a better place, isn’t he? The comments on his posts are more positive. Am I jealousy of him? Maybe yes, maybe yes!

On rare evenings, I go touch my lover, again, like I do every minute. My neck hurts from bending to the charging spot but my head hurts more because there’s a story of Cynthia who threw herself into a bus. Sad. She was only 16. Am 17. And she’s no more. Maybe she’s peaceful now. Maybe we had things in common. Did she have parents or all she had was the online family? I don’t know. RIP typing…..

Gertrude is a 78 year old Christian lady living in Canada. She texts me on messenger. I don’t know why her diction is better than the Myspace language. She looks like she’s been on Facebook her entire life. She asks for my email address and that seemed like her age. In a few days of praying together, she wants to send me equipment she doesn’t use anymore but I have to send shipping fees first. Scammed.

Then there’s Michael – a reverend father – in Jinja. He has no picture of himself on his timeline. Its just a bird. A dove. A beautiful Dove. I have landed on a good man. Haven’t I? He’s gonna be the uncle friend I never had. Michael wants me to go meet him in Jinja in a motel and spend a night. But am a dude and that’s weird. He offers me money for sex. Disappointed.

My friends are doing well on instagram. They have posh pictures and a comment to make them feel beautiful and whole. I haven’t posted in a while because I haven’t been to Izumi for a week and they have been at stone haven and Caffeserie on the same day. Their pictures of wine glasses make it look like they are having a perfect time and am failing. The pressure.

I have sold my car i got on a loan to finance a good following. My friends liked it. It looked good for live sessions and vlogs of brunches and forking around the country. Now that the car is gone, the friends are gone too. They need a new spot for vlogs. I got none. They are doing well and am broke. Depressed.

On a five storey building, I find a perfect spot with a window. When i posted my struggles, my ‘family’ just laughed. No one cared. Why should i care? Maybe Cynthia found a better way out. Let me end me.

To the love that will never be

I wished we could be or maybe not.

I thought wet and spat dry.

I left everything unsaid.

Your watches sparkled better than my roses

and your unpierced ears gave you a better charm.

I never lived for nose rings but my imaginations of you did.

I can’t get enough of how good you make me look.

I don’t think of your lips

Because I don’t know how delightful your kiss is.

I think of your tongue and how you spoke to me –

and how beezer your words of rejection sound.

How I have to deal with it for the time I don’t have on earth is not my part.

If our smiles were the same, I would borrow one and

help myself visualize life without you

Set me free to find love.

To find something better than a reject -maybe – a heartbreak.

Create room for other humans to disappoint me.

Because what you did was to make me stronger

and I don’t want to be strong; I want to be electric.

I want the shocks; I want to touch the electrons.

All I ever wanted was soulmates

because soulmates are best friends and more……

I want to marry like my father

My mother is not just a woman: she is my mother. A mother of four or perhaps could be six but the two decided to leave. She is a mother of five because God gave her a husband; the 5th child. She has two offices. The kitchen and the garden. I don’t know which one is better for her but she tirelessly loves both.

Am my mother’s favorite child. All of her children say the same thing but still; I believe am her favorite. As a young boy i was fragile – more perishable than anything. I couldn’t tolerate dirt, i was allergic to anything and everything but here i was, born humbly into my mother’s hands. She understood the assignment.

My mother didn’t go to British schools. My mother didn’t study. But my mother is a teacher. First, to an adult whose parents hadn’t taught co-existence very immensely. My father. He is a tender man but flippant minds won’t see that it’s because he married Gold. Second, a teacher to a generation that thinks it knows it all. That’s me.

My mother didn’t go to medical school either but first aid was her mastery. She has taught me things that i need to learn before i even know i needed to. She taught me to be un-ugly, to be unafraid, to be a man. I want to unfold the whole image but it’s unimaginable.

My mother married a traditional man. Her place was the kitchen and the garden. Master recipes, cook and serve your horny man. That’s all. She was traditional but she had kids to provide for. Above the kitchen and the garden work that cracked her feet, she added monetary work.

Waking up at 4:00 am was her specialty. We had to get ready for school under her watch. Her husband was another baby. ‘Amaate’ had to be ready at 7:00am. After milking his cows, he needed the tea. As we grew older, we unwillingly had to take some of these responsibilities. My elder brothers would milk the cows. I couldn’t wake up before 7am because I would sneeze the whole day. So, i was the VIP of the home.

Her husband, our father, was called ‘Mwami’. That’s what she called her. We called him “daddy mwami” because we thought his name was mwami. Some people called him ‘heavy’ which I still don’t understand because he has always been the slim brown Mzee of the village. My mother respects him. It’s what she was taught as a girl child.

My mother taught us to be husbands at a nonage. Not just men-but husbands. She prepared us for the world. She taught us how to balance tradition and revolution. She taught us how to cook. All boys of my household had to learn how to cook. She didn’t have to struggle a-lot with the cleaning part. God blessed her with tidy boys. She must be proud of all of us.

My love for Bruce and Blue

My skin was pure. I would effortlessly wash it in the morning as i brush my long teeth. My teeth were brown but my skin was blue. That was fine. The dark complexion of my skin would make my teeth glow whiter than glory. Its not what i would see in the mirror every morning. I had snow teeth in the distant eyes of people and brown ones in front of my mirror. Again, that was fine.

I had pin pointed pimples sprinkled around my cheeks but I would nearly be picked as a face for Boohoo-man or LV or Dior or A Bryans.

Lydia and her peers told me I wasn’t beautiful. They told me the pimples made me less of a woman – just a village regular girl living in a city. They told me blue wasn’t beautiful. Shakira is yellow. Zari is Pink. And you are blue. “Wabula oli naive” Nabatanzi laughably shouted. On fortunate evenings I would wash my face and smear vaseline and on others I wouldn’t. The oils from Mubiru’s’ ‘magi assatu rolex’ would do the job. I was oily and shiny. Again that was fine.

Lydia recruited Bruce. Bruce liked yellow. I liked Bruce but i was blue. I liked Bruce perhaps more than i liked being blue. ‘Ssenga Lususu’ was always on the local TV telling us she can turn blue into golden. Lydia was her client but her knuckles were still a work in progress. She couldn’t afford Glutathione so she went for a local concoction with too much hydroquinone. I didn’t know these things and again, it was fine.

On a regular evening, we went to Ssenga’s clinic, you can call it a hospital if you want to. Because i saw people taking injections like it was a covid vaccination exercise. I got my concoction at a fair price and i was ready to look like Rihanna.

After several weeks of peeling, i got to look a-bit like Ariana but without the Grande. I clearly cannot walk in the sun. Sunscreen is another bill i have to pay. My skin that was once as dark as Bad black’s sins is now as yellow as her cheeks.

If my knuckles can’t be light, then I want it all blue again because now, its not fine.