Before You

Photo by NIR HIMI on Unsplash

Before you, I mistook love for the deepest form of intimacy.

I thought being chosen was enough.Then you came ukaona parts of me I never knew how to explain. The grief I hid and the confidence that was just courage with makeup.

The jokes I made when I didn’t know to say what I really felt. And honestly some of it comforted me. Some of it scared me. Because every part of me that wanted to be understood stood next to a part of me that wanted kujificha. You saw both.

The beauty and the damage .The healed parts and the parts that were still leaking .

And yet you met them both so naturally.

That's why losing you hurt in a way I struggle to explain.

Love might come again one form or the other

But being recognized?

To encounter another consciousness that speaks your language that is the sort of miracle that does not often repeat itself

So now everyone who comes after you walks into a room you’ve already changed.

Because you showed me something I didn’t know I was missing

And now kila mahali naenda

I notice it’s absence