I took off my shoes again so that I can tap my feet to the beat of the music, in a restaurant that feels like home. Catching up with a friend I haven’t seen in 3 years, over dinner plates of vitumbua sliders and swahili chicken chapati pockets. She is growing in every beautiful way, her laugh and golden rings in her eyes are still the same. I am growing too, I dance more often these days.
I sit on the same maroon sofa again, lay my back on its armrests and my head on the side, only to feel the weight of missing my dad, both his new and old self. And I muffle all my whimpering because it’s close to midnight, not a good time to be found crying. Then I am destructed by some piano music coming from the bedroom downstairs. Or could it be the Mexican restaurant right next to us? And here’s to dancing when everyone else is asleep, and finding out where the piano music is coming from, even at midnight, especially at midnight.
Noon time, and I dance to Vance Joy’s We’re going home in the kitchen, cause nobody’s home. For once you have to believe no swarm of bees will come flying inside, so you open all the windows that are usually left shut. Maybe a neighbour will see you dancing, and feel a tingling in their feet, cause we are all just humans, reminding each other we are alive. Whether it’s dancing feet or tingling feet, it’s enough to call it a life.
I click onto another Novo Amor playlist, and Co-Pathetic comes on, as I step into the shower. My bare feet touching the floor, water and bubbles. I do this almost everyday, carefully moving with the rhythm of the music, under the silver eye of the shower-head, so why did I almost slip today? Why do I keep dancing in the shower? Wasn’t I told that in one early November, a 32 year old woman who significantly looked like me fell in the shower? And a tiny sea of red ruptured? And that’s where the end began?
But I’m here, and it feels like a beginning, for both me and her. So I take a long look in the mirror after I’ve put on my favorite dress of dark green. Favorite because it’s soft cotton and sensory-friendly on my skin, and because it has a slit on the side which reveals half my thigh going down to my toe, and I simply adore it. They tell me God wants me to dress in modesty, but angels bear witness to how the same God has whispered to me about side slit dresses and nose rings ever since I was 18.
Raising my arms to apply some deodorant, and feel like if I was a bee I would confuse me for a flower because I smell so good. I look at myself again, and it’s almost scary to how much I’m starting to look exactly like her, the 32 year old woman. What were her ideas of becoming a woman?
A fire burns, but it’s not one of damage, it’s one that feels like a rebirth, like a phoenix you know. So I smile back at her, the woman in a dark green dress, slit on the side, a dark red on her lips, her dark hair in 4 huge bantu knots. I tell her she feels foreign because all I’ve known is how to be a girl, and it feels like she’s asking me to be a woman. I don’t know how this thing works, but I make a little silly dance out the door, and God tells the 32 year old woman up above to turn up the music. I guess it will all be alright!
I love the way you described your day each new sentence as beautiful as the former . This was a beautiful read
I loved reading this. The emotions were palpable. 🥺