David

Photo: My Life Journal

I think of you all the time—with love, with respect, with admiration. Why am I so sad? I lost the love of my life and it feels like I’m in my twenties again. The young king never loved me back. Inside I feel so sad and over-wrought. Ill. All I want to do is shine. Like you.

I’m old. Too old for you. You’re a kid. I’m a woman. You’re leaving me. Father, brother, mother, sister. Greener pastures and the fairer sex await on the other side. I think of you smoking your last cigarette of the day. You’re perfect. You’re perfect just the way you are.

I could kiss you. Forgive you. Be in it for the long haul. You’re in love, my love. You’re leaving town. I’m swinging from the chandeliers. Burning the candle at both ends. I think of you. I think of you all the time. I always have and I always will. I feel as if my own heart is breaking. Everything I have ever done, is done. And here I am writing again to you David, my love. Always David. Always my love. And I will always be forever yours, but you are taken and someone else’s dream man. She loves you. Go to her. This will be goodbye then. All I want to know is this. Did you love me, once? Afraid? Yes, I am afraid. I am scared of the dark (for example). All I want is you. You. You.

But we are—and this difficult to admit to—children of the revolution. We are children of the struggle. You know it. I know it. And all I can think of is being in your arms and loving you. Go to her. Go to your life partner. You made a commitment to her. Go. I’ve been in the wilderness for a long time. You have your journey. You have your own journey. But do we meet again as friends, or lovers, or maybe nothing at all?

“You’re the music inside my head—my love song. And when the music plays, I pull the hair back from my face and, holding it up with bobby pins, I dance for you. And then I fall in love again. ”

I cannot help but love you forever. At the end of the day or the middle of the night. I am out of everyone’s reach. Everyone but you. In the dark silence, that unbearable silence of loneliness, all I see and hear is you.

Ignore what everyone else says and run away with me, David. Take me away from all of this hell and misery. Live with me. Be my love.

You, David, of all people understand what I think, what I feel, what I know, how I react to your voice. Is this hello or goodbye? I don’t know yet. The decision, is up to you, David. If you want me, I am here. I am waiting for you. I am waiting for love.

I will wait until I see your eyes again, that smile, that laughter that makes me feel young again.

See, I don’t care what other people say. I love you, David. I always have. How can I regret anything? I think of you all the time. I picture you in the morning and think of your silhouette in the dark. I adore you. I worship you. You are man, and I am Eve. I can’t get your name out of my head. You make me forget my dreams because I only want to dream them with you.

You’re the music inside my head—my love song. And when the music plays, I pull the hair back from my face and, holding it up with bobby pins, I dance for you. And then I fall in love again.

Remember when I was working as a cocktail waitress in the bar that we met? And how, like a heart-shaped bullet, you passed through me. How perfect you look. Even after all these years you still look the same to me.

You were once a chance. You were once an opportunity for a love affair. Now I can only see my shadow on the pavement in front of me, leading me home. You left me first. Standing there, looking at your gorgeous back as you walked away from me. I felt devastated. Empty. Left behind. It was a prophetic omen of sorts for everything in my life.

Go to your devoted wife and the beautiful daughter you created together.

I’ve had a few loves over the years, and all I can think of is one. There was the novelist and then the lecturer, the creative consultant, the educationalist, the producer, the researcher, the filmmaker, the clinical psychologist, the magistrate, and the list goes on and on. The novelist was my first love, and Swaziland was my first love, and my second mother will never see the light of day again. And so, I write. I write to heal the world, heal myself; always thinking of the novelist, always thinking of what could have been. Me, 16, with the sad eyes.

Perhaps it’s time to grow up. Time for recovery, and not relapse. Time to think, to mature, and be confident. Time to forget that all the other girls are pretty and the boys are handsome; that all the good men are gone and the women are married. No one hears this woman crying, sobbing into her pillow at night. She is all alone. So she thinks of her first loves and of her second mother sleeping in the graveyard alongside Ingrid Jonker. She thinks of eddies of dust on the mountains in the pure greenness of Swaziland, and she thinks of her novelist.

Always saying hello.

Goodbye.

About the Author

Abigail George is a Pushcart Prize ("Wash Away My Sins") and Best of the Net ("Secrets") nominated South African blogger (Goodreads, link on Piker Press), essayist (Modern Diplomacy, Ovi Magazine: Finland's English Online Magazine), aspirant filmmaker, activist, playwright, anthologised poet, chapbook, grant, novella, and short story writer (Africanwriter.com, Hackwriters.com), contributing editor at African Writer, editor at Mwanaka Media and Publishing, and the writer of eight books. She has two chapbooks forthcoming in 2020, "Of Smoke and Bloom" (Mwanaka Media and Publishing), and "The Anatomy of Melancholy", (Praxis Magazine). She has been published on many online global platforms. She writes about women.