We screamed to be heard, marched to express our rage. To bleed with our fallen sisters, for I am her, and she is me. We all lived each other’s suffering.

The dust has settled now, quiet returned.
Yet I still can’t breath. I am still not safe.

I cry silently for my country. I no longer connect to her. My love and pride is only filled with disappointment. She has left me sad, and empty and afraid.

My son asked me, “Why do you refer to South Africa as a she?” I look at him dumbstruck, he continues, “Perhaps SHE has always been a HE!”

This realization is hard to swallow.
This... scares me half to death.

Our friendship caught fire
and soon our roots intertwined
We wrapped our arms around each other
Filling the empty spaces once there

We held each other’s hands for years
and from today, for a lifetime more
Ever since your heart laid onto my soul
I knew that you are beautiful
I take you as you are
and will love who you are yet to become

I will choose you again and again
at the start and finish of each day,
each season, each year
I will choose you through our struggles and successes
and all the mountains left to climb
I will love you into oblivion
and we will tremble as we feel it

You are everything I never knew I needed
You are the question
I never knew I wanted answered
The question was love
and your answer was  “I Do!”

I will keep you afloat when the tears of your pain threatens to drown you. I will shelter you from the storms of your memories. I am not afraid of your dark. I will wait in the shadows of your heart. I will be the hand you reach for from the depths of despair, banishing the monsters lurking beneath. Let me calm the tornadoes of your doubts and gouge the eyes of those that don’t value you. Don’t fear the future of your dreams. The wounds of life may have cracked you. But I still see you, not the broken and flawed, but the beauty that shines through your imperfections. I am not leaving your side, I am here, for you, always.

You consume my thoughts and shadow my dreams. Each morning I wake with the memory of you. The longing is unbearable, but I choose the pain than the pretension of content. I hold onto the days before you left. Reminiscing about the moments that were as effortless as breathing. To love that weren’t forced, as we were drowning in it from the start. Each passing day the darkness of my loneliness tries to consume me. Its attempts are futile as your light runs wild within me. I will never fall away from the gift of us. Even though you are a thousand miles away, you are always beside me.
I miss you.
Always.

My soul felt you immediately
and my heart quickly responded
All I want is to open my eyes
and see you next to me
To feel your warm embrace
I realize now no distance is too far
and closeness is not about proximity
Our connection knows no boundaries
I will wait for you through seasons
and love you across countries
Even if you were planets away
You are still my sun

I can’t breath.
Your holding a pillow over my face,
and call it love.
I am not quite sure when you and me
became we, and us and ours.
You talk about forever
and I listen, halfheartedly.
While watching your lips move,
I plan ways of escaping.
You were too much
and yet, still not enough.
After awhile I questioned
why I was holding on so tight.
I held on until my fingers ached
and calluses formed,
and it no longer felt right.
I was choking on the silence
of all the words I wasn’t saying.
Suffocating.
Slowly my heart became a tomb
and you, the mourner.
I am truly and deeply sorry for your loss.

we have lost our sobriety
drunk off each other.  
i taste it when we kiss,
cancer dripping from your lips;
the poison consuming me.
i love the taste of you.
hopelessly, endlessly.
it is intoxicating,
each time your tongue touches mine,
i crave more.
slowly slipping, confusion settling in.
i am a stranger to myself.
lines blurred between lust and infatuation.
i can no longer tell the difference.
this is effortlessly painful,
and you have come to destroy me.