Numéro 6 Feb 2013
Le numéro sur l’écriture imaginaire
be denied to us…or them. I no longer form part of the collective. The laughs and congratulations and unsolicited advice seem so distant. Like a faded memory of something that could have happened. The pictures blurry and the sound barely audible. That is the quality of the scene before me. But if I end up with a man I can have it in HD. With surround sound.
you have to look life dead in the face. But for now I still want to party. Still want to pretend that the music is enough, that the laughter will not end and the good times roll for ever. And that you love everything that I am. Or at least the me in this very tight and constricting party dress. Pretending to be something.
If I end up with a woman, I may I want to pretend that there isn’t be lucky to get a black and the slightest possibility in infinity white picture with bad reception. that you wouldn’t love me. Or want me around. That I will My thoughts come back to not form part of the us and will my present. The gift I feel that become… may soon be returned. At this
moment you’re still happy to see Them. me. Know me. So I smile. Love me. I argue my case for “gay rights.” And I’m scared to change that. I tell you off for your scathing So I consider my options. homophobic comments that cut I could send this letter and shift to the core. the course of history.
The accent and the English words give a voice and a sound to a feeling very African in nature. I would say it in Kikuyu, if I knew how. I would say it in any African tongue if the words that were associated with who I am did not make the deities of dialect blush. If I could go back in time I would seek out the syllables that spelled who I am, not with disdain but description. I know they exist. We have just chosen to forget. As a continent we have forgotten the words, but the feelings have not forgotten us. I write all this with a clairvoyant perspective. Or what I have scared myself into thinking is clairvoyance. Maybe I shouldn’t blame myself but blame the beauty of hindsight given by the ugliness of others’ situations.
I allow you to think that I’m just This continent can be dark not being my quirky self and nothing only in skin but in deed. Or I could hit the draft button and enjoy my neatly constructed more. So I file this letter away. Not to reality for a little bit longer… “Kagure believes in these be sent. things…That’s how she has Cause that’s how I feel… always been. It must be all that Not right now anyway. That I have a little bit longer. time spent in the UK.” The fear keeps me in this Till something has to give.
No.
Reality can only put on its Halloween costume for so long.
Its all that time spent in my dark Luyha skin.
I can only pretend to be something else for so long before the heels begin to hurt, the pantyhose start to itch and the mascara begins to run.
In this body that cannot mask where it is from.
And the party ends. Monday morning comes and
In my mind housed behind my Kikuyu forehead. Nothing foreign. Nothing Western about what is inside. 78
uncomfortable costume a little longer.
My stockings run and the mask of make-up begins to crack but I need… …a little longer. For my past to remain. For there to be an us a little longer.