MY LETTER TO LOVE

Dear love

I write this letter to you in suspense of your truthful answer

Who are you?

What are you?

Where are you?

Why is everyone crying over you?

My entire life I’ve been surrounded by the words:

“Love is everything. If you have love you have it all.”

Yet I’ve grown up to witness people cry because of you.

I’ve lived to see people being abused physically, emotionally and mentally because of you.

I’ve fully-fledged to witness people being killed because of you.

I thought love was when two hearts beat as one.

I thought love was when I would open up my mouth and say words you would complete.

I thought it was patient, kind and selfless.

It was filled with laughter and ina ete, where it was not just about giving, giving but also about receiving.

I thought love was compromise, intimacy, respect, honesty, commitment and patience.

I thought loved was a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes that rages from interpersonal affection to pleasure like education taught me.

I thought it was to know someone’s weakness and not taking advantage of it.

I thought love was all around me.

But can I really say love exists when people are still oppressing each other?

When we still slaying one another?

When a brother is able to make a sister pregnant and deny the child?

It is love when you shoot someone and watch their blood flow like a river trying to find its own path from the sea until it becomes a dam around the victim’s body?

Love, where were you the time they shot Hani, multiple times in front of his daughters?

Where were you the time they tide Biko, to chair naked and beat him to death?

Love, where were you the time a virgin lost her virginity to an HIV positive brother who forcibly removed her underwear and forcibly penetrated her virgina  and once he reached the climax he said “shut up bitch! You making a noise”

Does love truly exist when I am able to hurt someone and enjoy the pleasures of it?

When people are still being necklaced? Where a tyre is put around someone’s neck and that person is forced to drink paraffin and gets poured paraffin all over their body and set alight.

Love, I’m trying to love but I get defeated because I do not know who you are.

Where are you when we can’t even accept ourselves for the way that we are?

Love, where are you when a child of the soil is mocked for being overweight and called degrading names every single day of his life?

Love, is it because of you that the carries of the foetus are subjective too abuse from the carries of the sperm cell?

Love, I don’t know who my father is because he rejected my mother when she was 5 months pregnant……he gave her R50 for abortion…..but she refused.

Love, where were you the time my mother had to be subjective to white supremacy just to feed us?

Where were you my entire life when I was alone?

Where are you when millions of Africans are dying of starvation?

 

I remember how I had to walk 19 kilometers every single day to get to school only to be taught under a tree and have Kellogg’s donate lap desks to us.

Love, thousands of people are sitting at home with their undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, again I ask where are you?

Love please expose yourself.

A simple hug from you will do.

I’ve been brought up to love one another, but how do you love someone else when you can’t even love your own self?

I remember the lame excuse they gave for killing my forefather saying he hang himself from a piece of soap.

Where were you the time my people were degraded to a state of not feeling human by those of a pink skin pigmentation? 

Help those of colour understand Black Consciousness

Help decolonize the minds of the Black man

Love, help a sister to understand being curvy is not being fat

Help him and her to understand being black is not a curse

I remember on her wedding night when she said:

“He uttered words that broke down the walls on my heart.”

Not knowing that she would later on be his punching bag.

I remember Tina, asking “What’s Love Got To Do With A Second Hand Emotion?”

Love, we need you.

We miss you.

We have been moving from one relationship to another in search of you

We on a journey seeking love

We go in and out because everyone wants you

Our sisters spread their legs wide open and our fellow brothers unzip their trousers because everyone yearns for a catalyst that will bring them closer to you.

We looking for love

That pure just feeling

Where someone gets lost in shadow

The echo of your silence is too loud

Love, who are you? Where are you? Please show yourself.

Poem written by Luchulumanco Nanto