Mwetu, Would You Be My Valentine?

I can’t sleep correctly; I get restless. I toss, wiggle and turn every second. You won’t enjoy the luxury of sleeping on my chest longer than a brink. I have a snore and, I hear, it is as loud as calamity.

I wake up to have a leak numerous times a night. Then I get thirsty. I wake up for a glass of water. Then I get hungry. I snack. Things fall in the night. Plastics clatter. Footsteps cuff. A microwave goes to life. The light from my phone will trouble your eyes. I fumble through books. I light a bulb here and another one there. I erroneously play loud videos on WhatsApp. Then I pee again and forget to flash. I leave the fridge door open. I nap. Then, I wake up at 5 am for a jog and leave the front door open. Should you survive the night, you will wake up one morning thinking we had just been robbed.

I feel it is selfish to ask you to sleep through an upheaval for the rest of your life but, wait, I will. For selfishness is the language of the heart.

During my creation, as god busied himself with several extraterrestrial errands, he forgot to put in me the divine gift of reusing cups. So, if I am to drink seven glasses of water a day. I’ll not replenish any. I will pick a flesh one with each drink and dump the rest under the bed, on top of the fridge, on the carpet, close to the bin, in the washing basket. Walking in my house at times feels like walking on a landmine; you would kick a glass at any second.

Well sometimes, there remains only one glass in the house. Sometime, like all treasures, my tumblers are buried under a sea of clothes, never to be found. One random day, they’re found by a deep diver who was only looking for his lost shoelace.

I am lactose intolerant. My intestines were built in such a way that they can digest stone but give me the smallest amount of milk I will in thirty seconds be running to the latrine with my hands on my butt trying to avoid a nuclear explosion. So, you will not enjoy the pleasure of baking me milk scones. I will avoid our wedding cake. I will nibble on it slowly while listening to my belly but you will grab it from me and eat it before anyone wonders why the bridegroom can’t eat cake. Because, you will always have my back.

But, I take tea especially when it’s too cold that one can hang a portrait of the president on my nipples. Sugarless tea, I prefer. I used to add a lot of sugar to my tea until you complained that my French kisses started to taste like obesity.

Would you?

You will look at me and wonder if I know what I am doing but making tea to me is not so much a science experiment as some make it appear. It should never be. I can’t memorise the right proportions or debate whether tea should be strained on not. I do not have that gift.

I prefer that my water be hot like it was forgotten in hell since 1804 BC. Warm water bruises a tea bag but it is hot water that makes it bleed. It forces the tea bag to show its true character. A squeeze of lemon is often great but, I know you hate this, I have to wait, until the water cools a little before I warm my belly. While the hot water is good for showing hell to the tea bag, my lips are not ready for hell — yet.

I often drink the tea and leave the tea bag at the bottom of the cup to reflect on its life and all the misery it caused in Thyolo before being bagged in that filter paper. Such cups with tea bags stuck to the bottom, you’ll find in my house. Forgotten. Undisturbed. The tea bag meditating like a medieval monk pursuing a monastic life.

There are things I did not do when growing up. Things I was beaten up for. Things I was scorned and ramparted for. These things, I do now. So, one day, should you notice a piece of chicken missing in the pot, kindly breathe deeply and ease down before dialing a pest controller to look for a mouse in the house. I am the mouse.

Call me vain, but I like walking naked in the house. I pay the damn rent, here. I will have a tough time letting go. I will mourn the loss of such freedom. One day, you will find me brooding — face in hands — thinking about how this freedom was lost. I will be depressed. I will want to dress down and walk naked for the comfort of my weapon of mass destruction. I won’t. There will be kids around.

I can be maudlin and sentimental — always, empathic. I feel things deeply. I love myself a good cry. One day, this shall bother you. One day, our daughter shall catch a fever or shall cry too loud and too long. I shall be worthless in those moments because I shall be crying too.

I simmer of activism; I am moved and unleashed by rage against poverty. I protest the perversion and debauchery of political madness. I will die for this cause. It is a death that awaits me. It is a death that is imminent.

I know, these things might sound selfish to say. I will have a daughter in a month. I, among all people, have to hang a bit longer on this earth . I have to learn to love my vegetables, I have cut on my meat. I have to jog more often and I have to meet my gym instructor often. I have to drink less and ease up on stress. I have to learn to rest. I have to live much longer to raise this kid to write her beautiful poetry to read to her in bed. I want to be there when she graduates. Above all, I want to teach her how to cook, sweep, mop, wash and bake. I want her to learn these things from me, not her mother, so that she doesn’t attach these tasks to her womanhood.

I have to be there to show her what a true man looks like, how he hold his head so that when she meets these guys who go through lovers like they go through outfits, she sniffs the idiots from yesterday.

I have a past. I have doors I walked out from and left open. These doors will send demons someday. But, I will not be stuck in the past. I will not waste time on the frivolous. Those demons should they come, I will fight them head-on.

I am telling you these things to understand that I am not perfection. I do not think my personality is up to scratch but I am a trying man. I have a hunger to be my most perfect self. But, ultimately, I am human.

Being in love me is being in love with commotion. I am a whirlwind. A man looking like he is about to lose a fight all the time. Because, in many ways, I’ll be losing. I’ll be struggling to catch a breath as I drown in this ocean of existence. I’ll fall and fail. I’ll sink and float. But, whatever life offers, I’ll fight back. And, effectually, I am a smooth warrior. I’m washed by the blood of my ancestors. My grandfather, Andrea, loved war. Those cowards murdered him by spiking his beer. They couldn’t wrestle the bulldog. They never stood a chance.

I was meant to fail. How could I win? Me of all people. An orphan from the age of ten. How could I rise like cream on fermenting milk? But, I trust you are the heat that will boil me. That will make me rise. So beyond all my shortfalls, Mwetu, would you be my valentine?