ro(woman)ce.

they never told me about this one of romance. the “let me stand against the wind so you can light your cigarette” type of romance. the romance where you wake up one morning and decide you want to travel across the country with someone you just met, and who sparks an adventurous spirit in you you thought died before your teenage years. they don’t tell you about the romance of someone taking you to their home, not for anything, but for you to meet their cats, and their best friend, and see their life. a life they step so wholly into, a life they embody. they don’t tell you about the romance of being on the back of a boda with the love of your life, cruising in the streets of Kibaoni, looking for a butchery because she decided she wants to cook for you, long before you got distracted earlier in the day.

so let me tell you what it’s like. it’s gentle, it’s comforting, it’s exciting. it’s exciting looking the way i do, and doing the things i do, like upping and leaving for a town i’ve never been at.

let me tell you what it’s like. it’s scary, but it’s so exhilarating that your body doesn’t even know whether to process the fear or nervousness the same, and does neither as a result.

she’s so beautiful. she’s a siren. and i happen to court her. i bring her in with my melodies, she takes me on journeys unplanned. she sees beyond my craftsmanship, beyond the image that everyone else sees. she sees the little girl that thought she had found love in a father whose sperm she was not. she sees her, and every version of her before and after.

they don’t tell you about that romance, they don’t show you it exists, they don’t want you to know. they want you to settle for surface-level. they want you to settle for physical, for convenient, for reasonable, they want you to limit yourself and what good you can experience.

they don’t tell you about the romance where she guides you through realms of reality that are far and wide, ones where your senses don’t rule, but the colors, the sounds, the experiences take over. they don’t tell you about the romance where you watch each other release all your inhibitions, where you try, but you don’t have to. you show up, not because it’s expected of you, but because you derive such an animalistic pleasure from seeing her, from being around, from being involved, for being in the same reality.

they don’t tell you about this kind of romance, but i swear to you it exists. i feel it, i see it, i live it. it’s bold, it’s captivating, it’s thrilling. and it is out there, when you’re ready for it. it will find you, and it’ll be nothing like what they show you it’s supposed to be. it’s free, it’s bare, it’s raw.