I was seated on our bed in the hotel room which you had decided to book even though we had gone through different options and I had chosen another place. We had been walking through the shops all day, stopping only to eat. I knew you would be leaving for a long time and so everything you did seemed like repentance. I sometimes wished that things could replace you, but all I really wanted was you.

You had wanted to show me how patient you could be and I had wanted to show you how considerate I am and how responsible I am with money, so you stood outside waiting for long while I walked around in circles and if you showed me two things, sometimes I chose just one and other times I chose neither.

Now I was inspecting, picking up and putting down items one by one. I picked up the ring box casually and as carefree as I could. I had planned to say something funny, something that would not show any partiality to love, rings or feelings. I started, but, suddenly you were on one knee. You took the box from my hand, opened it and held it out. I laughed, but your face was serious and cut my nervous laugh short.

“My name_ I love you. I always have. Always will. Will you be my wife again? Through loneliness, you laughed shakily. I grimaced and held my breath. I don’t quite remember what else came after that. I just wanted to remember what you knew, what you said, what you asked. “… and when you see it shining,  let it remind you of my love for you.”  I said yes; again, a little too quickly, again, in my own opinion.

I have remembered why I followed you. When we met I was looking for stability and you seemed to know the way. I allowed myself to be someone like you. You were unbound, crazy, mysterious, free and you were a mountain physically but also as a force. We secretly called you that, my high school friends and I. Yet, the same mystery and freedom scares me now and this past year and half, your mischievous eyes that can’t see, your lopsided tongue in cheek smile, and the school boy I met 15 years ago disappeared.  The torrents that beat you down, the future with all its uncertainty before you, replaced you and I missed you, constantly.

You’ve been restless. You’ve been sad. You’ve been angry.

The tips of your fingers are warm when they touch mine as though they were a matching set of prints. My heart rests when it is next to yours. I hold onto you on the plane to anchor my fluttering heart. That time, when the waves almost swallowed us, I asked you one thing. “Don’t let go of my hand. If our boat capsizes and we find ourselves in the lake, don’t let go of me.” Next to you, I feel like I have lived. I have loved. I have nothing left to fear. Without you, I feel like, I have given too much. I want it all back.

The day after I put on my new ring we went back walking and I suggested that I wanted to ice skate. You kept whispering and grumbling about how I could  break my leg but I insisted, so you kept whispering, “It’s your choice. You know how difficult it is to walk around an airport in a cast? But it’s your choice.” “You know how expensive it is to go to the hospital in a foreign country? But it’s your choice.”  I responded with, “I told you not to go back mountain climbing without a doctor’s check up and you still did it anyway.” “That was different”, you said, sensing defeat. I looked at you firmly and said,

“I want to do it anyway.” 

“Okay, it’s up to you.”

“Yes, it’s up to me.”

I had never skated a day in my life. As soon as the thin curved hook of metal touched the slippery surface of the ice, I knew I was in for it. I still had to show you that you had underestimated my strength and resilience though. I had also realised that it was not only you I was trying to convince, I was trying to prove to myself that I could handle myself hereafter.

The ice was wet-glass slippery and the audience surrounding the ice rink had a constricting racial element to it. In as far as the pyramid of the eco system goes, our race was at the bottom, so the middle superiors watched with anticipation. The man at the entrance had asked me twice if I knew that they had a disclaimer for any injuries, but there had been another one of us in the shoe dressing area who like us, is described solely by colour as if it is a paint palette, ranging from light to dark with connotations construing actual lightness for good and darkness for bad. He seemed happy and enthusiastic to help me, almost even confident about me. I held on to that little vote of confidence. I put the diastasis from carrying our children aside and pulled myself together, literally; holding my core muscles together for longer than I have in a while or ever. More complicated was that I was also wearing a semi-cropped top which I had worn with you in mind, so I gripped the plastic dolphin and learnt how to push myself forward and sweep the ice in an outward v shaped motion, mimicking the foot movements of  fearless young children who were whizzing past me and the experienced ice dancers near me, spinning and waltzing with grace- all while maintaining my posture and sticking to my stance.

About marriage- You want to bamba? You wanna chill with the big boys? (Ameno Amapiano)

Do you remember how when we got engaged, you told me that love was like the mountain we were on. You said that sometimes we would be up at the top and sometimes, we would be in what you always referred to, with amusement, as the valley of the shadow of love?