 
THE ROMANTIC DREAMER

By

Romeo D. Matshaba

Copyright 2013 Romeo D. Matshaba

Smashwords edition

All rights reserved.

I kind-heartedly acknowledge this book to all the list of loves I've had the privilege to meet. This book is a timeless artifact of you.

**A romantic** : A person with romantic beliefs, attitudes and thoughts.

**A dreamer** : One who doesn't think by physical boundaries, having 'his head in the clouds'

Chapter 1

The Last Romantic

Our second date. Was there a small feasibility that today would be as enchanting and delightful as that magical day before? But there was nothing in the laws of physics that denied me repeated marvelty. For I have always believed that the same laws which keep the planets in their orb are not dissimilar to those which govern and swivel our hearts.

I waited anxiously for her call, akin to a boy just before Christmas. "A few minutes now," I muttered to myself as I silently starred at the clock on the wall. Which seemed to take its precious time to arrive at 4 p.m.: procrastinating to reach there as if 4 was its fearsome foe. My eyes alternated between my mobile and that clock on the wall. My hair was tremendously combed and my breath was fresh. She had told me she would call and I believed she would call.

Only in dreams do those creepy arms of the clock not reach 4p.m, but this, although it felt like one; was no dream. It was 4p.m. – finally I would see that rare beauty that only lives in a handful.

However, mother had constantly warned me about how too much excitement always ends in rivers of tears. How could I have forgotten my basic teaching? Those creepy hands on the clock tick-tacked repeatedly until the sun went down.

I stared at the falling sun by the window in my lonesome dark flat, "perhaps something had happened", I thought to myself. But worse still, "perhaps nothing had happened".

Strange was how I felt, but stranger than this was the mere fact that I had only seen and known her for two days. But I was certain of it, just as I am certain that there lies beauty in the world. That I was madly and undeniably in love with her.

My theory was that as we were being conceived, God was creating her lips so-sugary so-pleasant with mine in mind... just perfect for these lips of mine: so that when we kissed even stones would cry. This theory, that he was fashioning her heart with mine in mind, so when we touch our hearts would beat to craft music as flute.

It was evening now, she still had not called. My senseless ego and Manish pride prohibited me from calling. But I owed it to myself and the one that beats within me to have the courage to my own romantic convictions.

I hanged up a few times before I ultimately gained the strength and valor to let it ring. Her silky voice answered at the other end.

"I wanted to call, I so desperately did." she said.

"Then why didn't you?" I asked her.

"You..." Her soothing breath filled her chest, "you wouldn't understand..."

"Then make me understand Fiona... what's going on?" She paused for awhile then proceeded to say,

"It was all a dream, a beautiful dream, but a dream nonetheless." She was crying when she said this, I'm certain of it. There's just something about a cry which you cannot miss. Before I could prolong my speech, a voice of another echoed, then the call was abruptly ended.

I had hopes that calling would provide answers I was so desperately seeking in order to grasp, and comprehend, this elusive matter of the heart. But all that calling provided was a stream of questions which bombarded my already troubled head.

These questions took me a few days back to the first time I ever set eyes on her. It began like any other day when something spectacular was about to transpire. As if nothing would ensue – I was sitting by the Arcadia Park, observing the world – a writer's curse: the wind swayed from both sides of east and west, and subsequently Fiona came along. Blind men must have seen her that day for a sight of an angel walking on brown earth was exceptionally hard to miss: an angel that walked and breathed like us.

She was as slender and tall as falling rain. Her hair was dark, long and her race was mixed. If only I alone possessed the sacred gift to see angels, but everyone around me was just as enchanted and captivated as I was. While walking in her high heels, she had that indescribable aura which leads men to flaunt as peacocks and make fool of themselves. She sat a few feet away from me on the opposite swing. She swung to and fro, to and fro, to listen to music.

I admired her liberated free-spiritedness. The flaunting peacocks came one after the other. Those who thought were smooth-talkers recoiled with clumsiness and smooth-walkers went back staggering like old men. Man after man they came with inviting smiles on their face but with sadness when they left.

When finally I glanced at her, I found her eyes addressed at me. Sideways I looked, there was nobody there. She smiled. Roses bloomed instantly on that faultless day. I hesitated to converse with her as I knew she burnt more than raging flame. I wished not to stagger like old men.

But I knew that were my ears not to hear the sound of her voice that day, irrespective of their nature, I would have regretted it for all time coming.

Like a brave little soldier going to war, I stood up and slowly walked towards her. On my reaching close, she stopped, smiled again. Violets followed to bloom.

"How do you do", I asked, while she took off the music from her ears.

"I've been better, but then again I've been worse," she said.

"Do you have time?" when she glanced at her watch, I interrupted

"Well Ms I meant do you have a lil' time, to spend with me?"

She blushed, I sat next to her. We conversated for hours, as if I knew her for years, but feeling as if not a ticking second had passed.

When it finally came time for her to leave, I grew quite sad and asked if I could see her again that following Saturday. It was a Thursday when I recall.

"What will you be up to tomorrow?" she asked, "Cos I would love to see you tomorrow, Saturday and Sunday and..." She stood up and left; but then she turned around and smiled once more. All flowers followed to bloom.

The day which followed, till today, I cannot possibly put in words. I was a dying breed; here in the capital of South Africa, the numbers of my kind had dwindled like water on desert sand; perhaps the very last of my kind – the last true romantic. But even for a writer, a romantic, not even in my dreams have I dreamed that such a day would exist. I kissed her beneath the stars, she held me tight and refused to let go beneath the stars. Ask the stars they will tell you, love happened beneath their eyes.

Now here I was in the night, after the day, with those stars which were so kind so bright that yester day – dark this day. I repeatedly asked what she meant, what did she refer? How could a dream turn so quickly into a nightmare? But a man's pride is a man's pride and I would not subject myself to such torture from another being, even if this being caused my heart to beat like drum. So I did my best to put her off my mind.

A couple of months had now passed since my hopeless affection. I had convinced myself that she was just another page in my life's book: neither that graceful beginning nor that violent end.

The life of the Arcadia flats was not for the weak and sensitive at heart. Here men exchanged concealed gifts which they called "cloud powder": it could take you to the clouds. The majority of women wore tight clothes and worked at night. But it was an appropriate dwelling for a writer.

Tired of the dinging sound of my typewriter – although at other times it was heavenly music to my ears – I strolled to the local supermarket which neighbored my apartment. Halfway there the earth stood still. As I gazed upon eyes which I never thought I would catch a glimpse of again, they were enchanting as ever, as if she still lived in the sky.

But there was something peculiarly different in the subject of her. Her make-up was overly redundant. She wore too little. Her hair color was too much, her company was worse, as they looked as if they went there and back again. She was too loud, how could she have changed in so little a time? Immediately on noticing me, her laugh evaporated like steam and simultaneously struck by a lightning of awe. The glass bottle she carried met with the floor; the acquaintance shattered the other into a thousand pieces of glass. We both froze like we were stuck in a timeless freezer, as round earth stood still for us. She was a working girl I was sure of it. Her company shook and woke her up. Without a word, I left; without a word, she left.

Back in my lonesome flat, those rivers of questions and I rallied once more. But unlike the time before the time, there existed an evident disparity. This time I had responses to the questions as everything became lucid and clear as day. She sold her body for money. We both knew that a relationship was impossible and immoral. It was all a dream as she had earlier said.

As days turned into cold nights, and nights into colder days, I yearned for the sound of her voice the feeling of her touch. It worsened each fleeting second as I thought, spoke and dreamed of her. What was I to do? It would be a sin to my reverends' eyes, a shame and insult to my families' pride. But I knew that were my ears not to hear her gentle voice once more I would have went deaf, were my eyes not see her once more, I would have gone blind. So I found her and accepted her past, embraced her present and told her that she was my future.

Our relationship was of the strangest kind but we both did not seem to mind. Her folks had passed on. The only two people she could call family was her brother Vincent, and the addition of me. She paid the mortgage and all his fees at the University of Pretoria with the cold money she earned. He knew very little of what his sister did for a living. We kept it that way for all future times.

She was as kind as a butterfly, yet every time she worked in those wintry streets, her essence and loving soul were slowly depleting. I kept her sane and showed her north. Now and again she would return with scars and bruises. It would bruise my heart each time. The challenges we faced were more than the leaves in the forest. But we kept strong like a rooted tree in the middle of that forest blown by a relentless and violent wind. Still, I remember our love overcoming the odds that were against us – at least momentarily.

Weeks went passed and months followed. Together we found the joy of Eden, before the sins of men. Together we found pieces and scraps of bliss. On one strange day, I recall it like no other as it hurt like no other. Tears were filling her sea-blue eyes. She said her love for me was killing me. This could not have been true, how could she have said that? The reason I touch is to touch for her. But my love was leaving and I could tell her mind was made.

"My being with you kills your dreams. You deserve more than this, more than me", She said.

"Promise me that you will meet someone normal, fall in love, grow old and have kids," I had never seen her cry as much. She continued to speak,

"Promise me, that you will neither wait for me nor try to find me, but to forever keep me in your dreams as I will always keep you in my heart," placing my hand so gingerly on her chest. Although at the time I did not wish to admit it, she was as right as rain. I swore an oath as a token of my promise, an oath I kept for forever and a day.

Today, just like all days following her miserable departure, I received an anonymous phone call. The person on the other end kept silent but I knew it was her – missing me as I do her. I have little knowledge of her whereabouts, however, wherever she may be I hope she found peace. At least she left me with her astounding memories; I needed something of hers to keep me company.

Chapter 2

The Lucy Rey Mystery

Back when I was younger, and more vulnerable to every minuscule episode, I like most, strongly believed in my own elite brilliance. That in all the billions, of countless billions, that have breathed and later lost their breath. That I was dissimilar, distinctive and unique. But time and age can whither this belief and expose the uncanny truth – that we are all drops in drops of water: disposed to pain, grief and loss. The humbling idea that everything we hold dear to our hearts today, will one day disappear, only cultivates and acquires form with the advancement of time.

There I was, after her cheerless departure; left there to gather my fallen parts and pieces without even a moment's rest or pause. The clock ticked on, the world went on spinning on its axis while swiveling with its bright moon. Nevertheless, there I remained, expected to advance this heart aching journey of life. It was even evident in the reflection on the mirror that a quantity of my unseen soul had died. But I was made up of much thicker bones and skin – perhaps even broken heart can heal. I had to continue without her somehow, I had to learn to live without her somehow.

Years had passed as they constantly do and today soon became tomorrow: now turned to then and slowly the nightmares reduced by small quantities and the lifeless cells in my heart increased by even smaller quantities; but they did.

I had recently moved from Arcadia to the neighboring – almost kissing Sunnyside's flats – the side where it is always sunny or as better known by its prominent dwellers; as the New York of the South. A place I would soon embrace and call my own. Although I had not forgotten about my past misfortunes and afflictions which transpired in Arcadia, I contemplated that perchance, here in Sunnyside, I would find fresh waters and mountain dew to start afresh. I had a promise to keep.

It was enormously apparent how people pontificate romantics in days and times of today. The very definition of my kind, a romantic, was vaguely misunderstood. They interpreted my breed as those who opened doors or bought flowers for the one they love. But dear reader nothing could be further from the truth. A true romantic does not look but gaze. He dreams romantically, thinks romanticism and only kisses with romantic lips. How can I explain it? My very DNA is different: it is bounded by romantic strings.

Sunnyside lived up to its name: shedding light were darkness lives. By some strange means, it liberated my mind. I felt as fish placed in the smoothness of water, bird liberated to fly in the softness of the wind or mighty lion released to the thorny jungle – roaring with delight. Here I could put layer upon layer of magic on the pages I wrote and all seemed to be well.

But like all true romantics, living without a heart was more grueling than flames to my back. Thus, aware or otherwise I seek turmoil and tribulations as vigorously as bees seek nectar from flower. It was at this precise moment when I met Lucy; while in solitary and troubled times. When all I was seeking: was one to lighten my load, lift my pain and to understand the pieces of my shattered heart.

There was a sense of sensitivity to her. The kind I was never likely to meet again. But that first day I met her, I observed trouble walking hand in hand with her shadow. She had this rare gift to entwine sensitivity and danger into one exquisite body.

It was a Tuesday, I think, but by then days were seldom imperative to me. There was rushing wind, however, not the kind which gestures destruction; on the contrary it was the soft and melodious kind which only cries for rain. The dark and ashy cloud had covered the blue, and the smell of rain perfumed the air. At a not far-flung distant, along my path, I saw them.

I believe she was dancing to something or nothing or everything in that open ground. But one thing was for certain, it was as if she was crafted out of sounds of music and a few pieces of perfect. She spoke very little and her smile was rare, this led her to have a certain natural authority. Even the moving air was cautious on how it moved in her presence. This flaming personality allowed her to speak volumes in one word of speech.

There was a guy – there's always a guy. He wore close-fitting leather pants. His tattoos were unconventionally colorful while his shades were quite dimly to hide the eyes. He was furious and gestured rage. She was bored signaling a lack of interest as she moved her legs that were made of musical nodes. He continued to howl like a grizzly bear. She remained serene and silent as if she repelled the darkness with her scent.

I approached them at a snail's pace with her face leisurely coming into focus after observing them for a while. She stared at me: a glare showered with promises of the future and warmth of peace. I now evoke how, with that single fleeting stare, she gave more than what all women could by no means give me in centuries of years.

When the momentary loose string – which connected our eyes shattered to spoil – I imagined all possible futures my life would bring. A young, an old, wealthy man or a man deprived. In all these possible futures I could not, even if I so durably tried, imagine any future without her.

"If you so wish," I told her, "you can choose to stay here with him." I further uttered words which in the inner chambers of the ear lovingly whispered my name. I drew closer, chest to chest, almost feeling the rapid beating of her heart with my words painting a doorway to heaven, for her eyes to see.

"Or you can choose to come with me," extending my hand towards her. Her eyes alternated between us two.

She smiled and took my hand. We ran away, leaving her guy bewildered as to what had just transpired. I believe the invisible audience laughed at us that day.

Later the three of us - me, her and delight – dined at my flat as the drizzling drops of rain drew crooked lines on the window. The silence living in the wind softly whispered, "It is cold outside and warm inside". Then Lucy Rey also whispered,

"Perhaps I should go", biting her lips, and ironically showing no signs of wanting to leave,

"Or perhaps you should stay," I also replied in whisper, virtually by impulse or hypnosis. When she stayed it became passionate inside, and dull outside.

In retrospect, I now see: I was being manipulated. Did I even decide to articulate with her? Or was I enticed by her seductive eyes, like a hypnotized mouse enticed by the promises of cheese? Right there, I knew that before our time is done, before our soul departs for the sky, only one of us would win these Lucy Rey games.

I was awakened by streaming particles of light which managed to penetrate the rather impenetrable black curtains. The light momentarily blinded me. When my sight returned, there she was gently lying next to me. Her smooth long legs seemed to be without end, although the beginning was evident to the soft eyes. Right then and there I could tell the historians of the future the reason why the first and second world war came to be. My theory was of the simple kind but astonishingly self-evident. I believed that God became too distracted with fabricating and constructing her to be concerned with the rest of humanity. I imagined him like Da Vinci: working busily and tirelessly in the day and resting only in the late hours of the night. Taking his time – beauty necessitates time. Lucy Rey was undoubtedly the most beautiful woman to ever walk the face of the earth. But yet, everything about her scared me: her eyes or face or lips... her beating heart, scared me.

She smelled of fresh air, fresh water and fresh flowers. You could tell that her intoxicating perfume cost at least a little more than my thumb. But strangely enough, Lucy was between jobs. You could easily discern that she had never worked a day in her life. Those soft and beautiful hands could barely make a cup of tea. Something was clearly unsavory and dubious. So like a classic detective in a dark hat and brown coat I was to solve the mystery of Lucy Rey.

I recall a moment of introspection as I felt awful about Lucy's boyfriend. His lifeless stare remained engrained in the corner of my brain. I recall his wretched stare, as if to say,

"Why are you stealing my sun and my moon; those jewels that are the sparkle of my eye and the light of my sky?"

"Do you reckon he'll be alright?" I asked her,

"Who... that want-to-be rock star? Forget about him..." she said, softly caressing my face and blowing the cigarette smoke through the cave of her mouth.

"It's you and me now, just us."

If I was not me, and my thoughts someone else's, I would have felt alright and my day would surely have been bright. But I was certainly alarmed that if she can throw him as spoiled garbage, what prevented me from becoming the inadequate garbage tomorrow?

Like the detective in the brown coat, shades and hat, I knew that the only way I could understand what makes her heart beat, was to grasp and be acquainted with her life story.

It was only after I told her about my past afflictions with Fiona that she became emancipated to explain. She divulged over breakfast her rather unconventional upbringings. A simple but yet underprivileged life she grew up to before she was touched by the harsh morning and the unbearable cold night, before she met with Razor. One could only compare their encounter with two planes violently colliding with each other – leaving only wreckage behind.

Razor was her first. He taught her about the secrets of old: the secrets in the Garden of Eden. Together the world was theirs: a modern-day Bonnie and Clyde. A famous gangster like Razor afforded her the things she only had in dream and the world was truly hers for the taking. But perhaps I should have said Bonnies and Clyde. But when she spoke, he painted bruises all over her perfect body, but, "Not on the face," Razor always did say, "not on the face".

When you live by the sword your right-hand man steals it and stabs you repeatedly in the back. That's exactly what happened to Razor. She was no longer safe, so Lucy had to flee. The incident was a shallow gift and a deep curse. A gift since there was no more Razor; no more wretchedness and woe. But a curse since she could no longer return home and see her own, plus she had nothing to her name.

She would never love again, that much was clear. "Love hurt too much," she thought while fleeing to the city of Pretoria. She knew not a soul here but she was strong. She had survived worse: cops and thugs. The taxi stopped and the strange city was raining cold. My Lucy Rey sat there in the rain – in the freezing rain. Her astounding beauty would come to her rescue as it has all her life. A man in a Mercedes pulled over.

"Are you alright Ms?" he asked concerned,

"Do you need a lift perhaps?"

"A lift?" she smiled sadly, her dazzling white teeth must have blinded him awhile nonetheless.

"A lift is only good for someone who has a place to go." He thought for a momentary while, whilst starring at the cold August rain.

"You must come with me then – let me accommodate you till you can find your feet." She might have wandered what he had to gain from all this.

When they arrived at the man's house, there was a lady in the kitchen. Without a single utterance of a word, or a simple introduction, he took her bags and planted them in the guest room. They sat on the couch, the three of them. He was at ease, as if this was a conventional and habitual situation. But it was not, there was awkwardness and silence. The tension immense: you could cut it with a blunt knife. He later stood up and showed Lucy her room. Him and the other woman also headed to bed. There were screams. The lady was shouting uncontrollably. How could you blame her? Later that evening he came into Lucy's bed: She was wearing very little and he even less. He told her how beautiful she was and the Mercedes man stayed the night.

A few days went by and the two women lived under the same roof. It was only a matter of time till the pressure weighed in on the other. She packed her bags and left Lucy with her now ex-husband.

Their relationship was neither written in the stars nor carved in ancient stones, so they soon parted. A few years later the once strange city of Pretoria was now Lucy Rey's playground. It was then when I was first introduced into the violent story of Lucy Rey. She asked why I had chosen to be a writer. "Writing was hardly a choice for me," I explained, "It is a basic need just as much as lungs need air, or my lips need your kiss." She swallowed my delectable words with eager lips.

Lucy loved to listen to the beating of my heart – it was the only way she could fall sleep: with her ear gently fastened to my chest. Perhaps she heard the silent messages that my heart portrayed, or understood the dying secret that my heart kept. That it was not beating to beat, but rather trying to escape my chest and reach for her.

Now and then, time and again, she would retreat to her shell like a sluggish snail: that rough and thick shell lingering with the roughness of her upbringings. When she did, Lucy would act as harsh as bitter vinegar towards me.

But even in those cracked and uneven moments, I knew with my beating heart that she was most tender of all living beings. A gentle soul concealing her love so bright, pure and teeming with glimmer that would burn this world to the ground.

Lying beside her, I could have sworn that two people existed and danced the tango deep within her. The devious and promiscuous Lucy Rey! And a gentle soul only missing wings to fly. I was given to curiosity and I too listened to the sound her heart produced: ear to chest I listened; perhaps I listened with ears made of romantic fibers. But I heard a distinctively unique language that was unobtainable in the dictionary – it was a language of the heart. I smiled as I understood what her heart would say, "You hear it?" she said breathlessly. I nodded. She sighed and held me close.

As we lied close together with both our hearts to speak, the only thing that separated us was the tiny molecules of air between our skin. I believe we both felt it; there in comparison with the vastness of the universe; there between the sheets and the soft wind between us: was where we belonged.

The day before, my route headed to the south, today it is heading towards her. Yesterday her eyes, lips and dreams scared me. This day life without her would be a sad and whimsical flaw. The day before this, my heart had no proprietor; at this moment in history I was in love with Lucy Rey. She smiled as if she saw my thoughts and I felt her all-embracing love filling my sky.

"Do not hurt me Romeo, please don't hurt me".

As if in the presence of wise men we spoke of dreams and kids and things. Only the walls listened with vigilant ears: blushing, crying as love grew, evolved and filled all the space between us.

When it came time for her to leave, she grew quite downcast and refused to kiss me goodbye. It was only after I promised I would call her the very next day that she did. With the taxi driver impatiently waiting,

"Come live with me,"

Said I, she smiled; love smiled at me,

"I'd love to. I'll wait for this call!" The taxi drove away. I stood there staring at her parting image.

Sunnyside's streets are relatively safe as people constantly traversed up and down. Except at Esselen Street – the street which loathed the sight of sleep. It was here where I rallied with them – those two robbing thieves. Two midgets, two cheeky midgets. Dear reader, I must honestly admit, I was tempted to replace the dwarfs by two wrestlers as I felt ashamed that I got mugged by the seven dwarfs – but midgets they undoubtedly were.

"Ey, you... empty your pockets!" the one midget said, with a matchstick dancing in his mouth. At first I thought it was a joke, looking at their oddly shaped heads from above. But the joke quickly turned sour when the midget pulled out a rusted gun. Without delay I surrendered to my foes; my very tiny foes.

I walked away slow, like a snail carrying a heavy shell or a tired old man with tired eyes and tired dreams. Perhaps they did not understand what they had done – they had opened ancient scars in their tomb. They had mocked Romeo and Juliet, spat on Jack and Rose and cursed Bonnie and Clyde. Those midget thieves had stolen my heart away, not by my wallet or my phone or my fear but by the single string of numbers in my phone that cried Lucy Rey. My eyes, although they were still in denial, knew they'd never see precious beauty again

I had always admired the lush multi-layers hidden in silence, like the poignant silence between nodes which holds the secret to all transcended music. Or the rich quietness that lives in-between uttering's of speech; the silence which holds the key to all poetry. But not silence of the heart. I resent silence of the heart. I – more than any other – know that if the heart forgets to beat and desires silence instead, than the body, is but a worthless rock.

That night as I stared at the sleeping moon by my window, I noticed how the carnivorous darkness had swallowed the background light, and how only the sleeping moon lived to shine. The city had hushed and the wind had become still as only the dead can be. My mind had voyaged like an adventurous weathered ship as I continued to stare deep into the dark. I noted how in that white room except for those strips of black that the night had entwined the colors and I could neither distinguish one from the other nor discern this from that.

But the knowledge lingered that tomorrow; the sun of heaven would return, paint the leaves and the tender sky, the tender blue sky but would still leave my heart dripping black. I instantly loathed the dark night for the same night that had swallowed its background light – swallowed my one true love.

A distant shadowy star lingered at the far curvature of my eye, one which only reminded me of the days preceding her when stars still gleamed in the sky. Days when I was at ease – days when I needed less. Tomorrow came but I hated the morning light and despised the very flow of time.

When I finally became tired of pitying myself and loathing the world, I searched for Lucy. I searched neither as a sad man or a mad one but one seeking for oxygen to breathe. Everyday my searching for her was beyond futile. My ear had started twisting the slow sounds that reached them into Lucy's voice – a voice it desperately needed to hear. But not just one voice, all voices that were carried by the wind came from her. My eyes deformed all light carried by the vacuum and painted her so fair before my eyes. I was going mad.

The missing did not take pity and decide to look the opposite way. Rather it stared at me with evil eyes. I remember how the pain of missing her evolved from an emotional pain to a physical one, a deeply cynical one.

I closed the curtains and turned off all light to live in darkness. A beard involuntarily grew and all doors were forcibly locked. I had stopped to live. Life had departed with her.

I heard a soft – and almost – silent knock on the door. I wished to be alone, miserable and alone but something persuaded me to open. The sunshine hurt my eyes. I could not make out who stood still on my door. A fleeting moment later I saw her. There she was on my silver door, with shining eyes and shining lips. Staring at her with teary eyes I drank the air and the passing wind – it was perfumed with her breath. She could no longer hold in the tears she had withheld in her eyes. I too could no longer cage my heart from leaping to her.

I held on tightly to her covering like I was catching a flight: loved her as if I was about to die for her. But finally when we both could catch our breath, I looked deep into her layered eyes and I saw the one I love. But unlike the time before when I imagined all possible futures, there was one I imagined without her.

Chapter 2

The Lucy Rey Mystery

As I feared, when time progressed, like all fine art I started seeing the flaws buried within her. And each day the gap between us matured and became sizable. Before we knew it there had been a gulf between us and my ears could no longer grab the sound of her beating heart... she was always made for the wind, a leaf in the wind. In the evolution of time, I learnt to live without my Lucy Rey. Somehow I am glad it happened as it did... My life would have been much simpler, hardly a life to write about.

At first glance, blinded by its precious beauty and strolling mermaids, (no, not stunning woman but mermaids), mermaids who could only breathe in the softness of pure water. You could mistaken the carnivorous nature of Sunnyside; the city of lost dreams. I have strong convictions that I have not been the first, nor will I be the last to observe this nature. It preyed on the weak not on special days like Sunday or tired days like Monday, but on all days; Sunnyside days. Here I witnessed the young sparkle to replace the current and the old wither to replace the fallen leaves.

She had strategically positioned herself at the center heart of Pretoria; the radiant capital city of South Africa. My turn had come, and I too would be a victim to her piercing claws. The night was fresh and humid, those pleasant nights were owls are asleep and stars are wide awake. What I later discerned to be a misfortune, that day I saw it as manna from above; a blessing from the sky. I found myself among loud music, dancing souls and lots of empty bottles. My initial idea was to celebrate the success of my latest book; a lonesome and solitary life only afforded me to celebrate by myself. This was when I found her or perhaps more accurately where she found me.

I was at the bar, trying to get a cold and soothing drink with my wallet open – a peeking stranger could easily see that the colored papers inside the wallet had hardly any place to breathe. Perhaps this is what started it all. "Buy me a smoke" a voice whispered, turning around I caught glimpses of divine beauty. Her speaking lips assured me that the plot was about to take a sensible turn. Bianca and I then drank too much and spoke too little. When we ever did converse, truth was not among us although at the time I was blinded to all this.

There was a singular moment when smoke made its way through the passages of her mouth when she told me a little about herself. She had seven siblings; all male. "I am the queen of the house," she said "I wanted you to meet my father, but unfortunately he was leaving before dawn". She then told me how since it was late and other stories my ears could not easily grasp. That if I will have her, she will dine at my place tonight. Given that this was in agreement with what I had hoped, I readily accepted her handsome offer. Little did I know that this was the first string of lies, her silent lies that would lead to my life abandoning my youthful soul.

In my apartment we were two individuals who had drunk a bit too much and laughed a bit too loud. Fun and my entertaining nature soon led her to wear the natural clothes of skin. It was a marvelous sight, the kind which an artist would stare bewildered. But I could not help but notice the scars that her body carried. This was not the scars of a rich suburban girl, whose only adventure was at a zoo, as she later came to tell. These were the deformities only associated with woe and suffering. But the scars on Bianca's body were perfectly sited, so my Bianca, my Sunnyside mermaid inspired the jaw dropping amazement of awe.

In the morning light, Bianca's two eyes got teary when I told her I had to go to work. Her arms wrapped around me as if her breathing depended on mine. When I tried to convince her otherwise I could tell my words were falling on deaf ears, "Is it a sin to want to be with you?" she asked with adorable puppy eyes. Soon thereafter, the yellow morning sunrise tainted, Bianca and I laughed and sighed and shared a few memories of our past. I still recall the innocents of her eyes, but what scared me was her guilt-ridden mind. She would hold me a bit too tight as if there was something or someone she feared. This reminded me of the scars on her back: at first I thought it was her father, Lucas Smith, a man she could not speak of without scorn on her face even when her lips smiled.

A call she received, reminded me of Yesterday. How Bianca was almost famous at the club we met, the varied men who knew her by name, the varied fingers that pointed her way. Somehow I was oblivious to this as well, deafened by her soft and hypnotizing words falling on my ear. Especially how just before we left she spoke to a scar faced man with broad shoulders and dark eyes... he glanced at me, then discretely handed her a concealed parcel. Perhaps my title of being a well known author convinced her that money knew me by name. I believe that was when she made it her objective to mine every last penny I had. She squandered my small wealth the way a child would extract honey from a jar.

Her consuming nature did not look far in the future, as she spoiled and mutilated every tap of money that came my way; I lost my job in the months that came. And what was worse I had not written a single word since I met her, she had become my shadow – a thing which is always there, but its reality always doubted. Her stories were similar; my brother was in an accident... I need money; stories, stories and more hideous stories. But the more I listened the more I believed, the more I became a Sunnyside fool.

There were moments, however rare, were her eyes would not lie, moments where I could feel her presence close to my skin as if veins and arteries connected our hearts. And all my entirety, the thousand molecules in my heart dwelled there for her, but this much was clear; I had become a fool, a fool in love.

Soon all the small wealth I had accumulated died in the night, and when the day came I turned to the few friends I had, and when friends were exhausted by time; I turned to enemies. They did less good and more harm with their sharp teeth exposed in the dark.

"Friends... they made me do it" she said one night assuming I was asleep,

"I didn't mean to do this; I didn't mean to destroy your life". She spoke about a rock; those friends must have neglected to tell her how this rock, this poisonous liquid of a stone becomes your way of life once it made its way through the bloodstream.

"They made me do it; and now I am in love with my kill... no matter how much I fight it I am madly in love with my kill."

At dawn, we were two souls one begging for forgiveness and one willing to forgive. "Please get me out of this life" she said, those eyes crying by fear and by hope of an almost bright tomorrow. The one thing which led my mind to the valleys of foolishness was the hope that I could save her, the fools hope that love outweighed all things.

And I did, I saved her, a beautiful life we lived. It was not without pain and vigor, but day by day, she instilled less and prayed more, we crawled before we could fly. I loved her each time and she loved me each day.

There were days of sorrow were my Bianca would evaporate to fade for days. The voids she left entrapped my broken heart, when misery and distress would try to crawl and fill those spaces around. Our later blend and bond would then fade the sufferings of the past and bring joys of the present, dreams of the future.

For her, I sold all my possessions, and what was mine in this world I could now carry on my back. It was then when I realized my mermaid's true nature. A sexy and deadly bloodsucker; my beautiful Sunnyside mermaid. Her eyes darkened and the door violently opened, his massive arms blotted out the outside sun on my apartment door. I recognized that scared face instantly... somehow I knew he was here for her.

By senseless gallantry and heroism, I opened my mouth to ask, when my mermaid was in those giant arms. He said very little, in fact, I never saw his teeth. Only a silver blade that punctured a hole through me and as the red river of blood flowed out of me. I felt my life abandoning me as they left hand in hand, my heart abandoning me as she looked and blew a final kiss of death.

I have little memory of what transpired when darkness and nothingness was all I managed to scrounge, except waking up in a hospice bed, with my lungs finding it difficult to breathe when oxygen had turned to toxic fumes.

I loved a girl, and she lied to me on one occasion, she fooled me on one occasion. Then within a lie she lied once more and I was fool once more. I loved a mermaid ceaselessly, and she loved me sometimes, she killed me sometimes...

No Place

For

Romantics

I had learnt my lesson, although I would have preferred an alternate learning curve as far as Sunnyside mermaids were concerned. I still carry the scar beneath my last rib; my badge of honor, my badge of foolishness.

But among the varied things surrounding my beating heart, some near some far, at the rim of it all, I have come to hold my precious Sunnyside. But how far away was my beloved city now. As I recollect that single first step. I was welcomed to Johannesburg city by its unpleasant foul air: that green and slimy alien air poisoning my human lungs while reminding me of distressing past days of my first love. How I preferred instead the fresh smell of Sunnyside roses.

After a few small steps from the station, I was greeted by a sickly looking boy. He had a shameful look, that shameful look we dare not see. I had nothing to spare for the boy, I told him. But there was no truth in that vile statement. My wallet was simply too far – buried deep in my luggage. A terrible habit I picked up along my lane of life. The boy crept behind me like my formless shadow – I felt his presence in the ambient air: stalking behind me as if I was a vulnerable and feeble prey estranged from its heard. I trailed his path on the mirrors on the building wall. Those strange dark eyes glaring at me, still, he was just a boy. What's the worst he could have done?

"Only if I could find a taxi", I thought, "to rid myself from this uncanny shadow of a boy". Soon thereafter a yellow cab came galloping by. A cab that I hoped would liberate me from that dire circumstance. "Taxi" I shouted, the gentleman halted roughly next to my feet.

"Kind Sir," I said to him, "my journey takes me to Auckland Park. If you could take me there, I would be most grateful". He shook his head,

"Fockin tourists," and screeched his wheels on the dirty streets as he drove away.

The boy quickly prowled closer as a tiger would have pounced on its prey, ceasing on a moment of clear vulnerability.

"Oakland Park?" he asked, "Me know where it is."

"Auckland Park, you know the way?"

"Me know the way Sair," he said assuring.

"Very well, I shall appreciate your guidance greatly if you can funnel me there so to speak."

"I carry bags," extending his darkened hands towards my luggage, with those long rusted nails where ants could live in.

"It's quite alright young man; I do not wish to burden you with my luggage"

"Sair... let Jumbo carry BIG bag," as he patted himself proudly on his chest – dust flying from his dirty shirt.

"Small bag carry"

"Medium bag carry... big bag -"

"Carry," I interrupted him, this war-of-carrying I would not win. Thus I relinquished my neatly packed suitcase and laptop bag to my rather odd companion. He then led the way like a faithful and ragged campus. The companions we meet!

Like ferocious army ants, the city was filled to the brim leaving hardly any space to walk or even to breathe. Everyone forcibly pushing their way through, even old and crumpled women in walking sticks pushed like those vigorous juveniles. In this pushing mania, a strong and beastly hand grabbed my arm. It was Jumbo still holding me. When I turned back to look, before I could interrogate him, I heard a thunderous sound in my rear. Glancing back, a dreadful collision had just happened – Jumbo had saved my life. I stared at him wordlessly.

"Me take you to Oackland Park, not to grave Sair."

I believe he was being humorous. I was grateful – it would not have been a romantic death, if such a thing ever existed. A man calmly exited from one of the collided vehicles. He had blood rushing from his nose and dripping to the floor from the tip of his nails.

"Sir," I remarked, "you urgently require medical assistance you should be lying still."

"Still don't be a punk mei bru, just a few ribs sticking out!"

I was awe-struck in the voids of my spine when I heard his reply. He struggled to reach into his back pocket with the one able hand for a lighter. He then set fire on the cigarette in his mouth. With white smoke from his mouth coming out concurrently with blood from his nose, he then got into his car and roughly drove away – with one hand smoking one hand broken. I then felt it: a wintry chill in that same spine. This was no place for romantics.

"Two weeks, just two weeks, I can survive in this jungle of a city." I reassured myself. The boy called me the appropriate cab,

"Car take sair to Oakland Park."

I gave him ten times as much as what he had asked, and by so doing I had planted a smile on Jumbo's face, one that grew as rapid tree. I watched him slowly walking away – my strange companion – perhaps I should have asked; what was the best he could do? The silent heroes we meet!

Journeying to the south, to my new home, although my body seated faithfully in the cab, my mind and dreams were still webbed in yesterday. I compare the state of my thoughts to a stubborn and incurable disease, or a recurring melody in my brain. She had sweetly infected my mind.

Inside the cab, by an unfortunate incident, I found myself sitting next to a very fat chatterbox, with strings in the gaps of her teeth. A lot of things spewed from her wide mouth but I do not recall hearing sense. I heard words such as boredom and dullness but not amusement or sense. I assure you, those were not present. Thus I dreamed away and thought of her. The one thought that would turn a ghastly night into a day of bliss. I thought of yesterday – I thought of Lu. I remember our conversation being brief, only passing and our hug fleeting only discrete. Nevertheless her laugh extended through centuries; and her feeling was marrow deep.

I first met her among my companions wherein she tried vigorously to make me laugh. However, her efforts were in futility. She later questioned my humor, or rather my lack of it. I explained how I was departing from my beloved Sunnyside the following day. How this had made sadness to visit my face. My infant years in the United Kingdom had deformed my accent into a merger of the two; Lu found it quite refreshing when we spoke.

I had been busily travelling that day. A few miles to the east, and not as few as it was in the other tracks and bearings, but Lu had been the most beautiful thing I had seen in all daylight hours. As the rest of us drank the night away, her moral compass did not sway. "Why did I have to go to leave her there?" She became sad when I announced it. But her smile quickly returned when I told her I shall endeavor to see her once more.

At last, I had reached my destination – Auckland Park. I stepped back a few steps to inspect my new home. I found it to be a clean white house with a rather quaint door knob. Upon entering I found myself staring at an ancient, roman numeric clock. It was positioned fixed to the right of a poem on a wall. I instantly recognized the piece - reviewers called it the most heart-felt poem written after the war. Or perhaps the reason I distinguished it so lucidly was because I wrote it a long time ago when I still breathed poetry through my lips. I planted my bags in my venerable aired room which was fit for a prince. A glass of wine and soft music soon followed, while summoning remembrance of how every house had high walls and multiple locks installed, they seemed to be sheltered from goblins and mongrels – ghastly creatures of the night.

I was to wake up at the break of dawn, 6:30a.m. To be precise and march to the seminar. My topic was romantic literature, a subject I had reinvented in the years following Fiona; a thing which now lived and breathed through me. I readily accepted their proposal when they asked me to teach romanticism to their pupils at Wits University. My plot was to give rise to a new generation of romantic beings. To implant upon their minds and sinew the 207th bone: the long lost romantic bone. Like planting the last seed of a beautiful flower, I would place this one into their hearts and see it grow. I knew that I owed it to myself and the ancient romantics of the past who came before my time to perpetuate our species.

A few minutes after midnight, I heard a hard knock on the door. The strange thing was that I was sure to have locked the small white gate outside. "Or did I?" The more I ignored the knock, the louder it grew. Then like a burning flame, a thought lit in my mind. "Was this not why all the houses were overly secure with high walls and barricaded doors?""Was it creatures of the night, or even worse, men of the night?"My general idea was interrupted when the perpetrator called out my name. It brought a shallow comfort to my mind. At least the goblins knew my name. Still in shorts and vests, I slowly opened the door. To my jubilant surprise, when the moonlight hit his face, I knew instantly who it was. Charles, a friend I knew in times before this.

"This is Monde," he explained who I caught his eyes enquiringly addressed to mine.

"We've come to show you around," he said. I glanced at that old fashioned clock on the wall

"Fellas, not to sink anyone's floating ship, but I am speaking tomorrow. I have to be up just before the rising sun."

"Dude, who speaks like that, are you some kind of a –"

"Romeo here is a famous writer," Charlie interrupted. "C'mon on R, only a single round; for old times' sakes:" "for devils and snakes." We both said concurrently; smiles and sighs to follow. I had qualms and reservations about venturing into the night but I could not bring disappointment to the face of an old and dear friend – especially after he had travelled this far.

Still, the things we agree to.

When they showed up on my door, how could I have known that we would pocket the night? Make it ours, the ripened and sour fruits that this night would bring! Before I knew it the wind had carried us to 7th street in Melville. Sitting there, my back almost touching the wall, with the wooden table and few glass pieces between us, she gave me a hard stare. That stare you only give to the one who you wish to know your name. But I cared very little for her name or the texture of her blonde hair. It was still Lu who my eye wished to see. Her heart I needed to know and call my own. But as all men of valor know, the mind has more tricks than Houdini, and alcohol even greater. When I slowly emptied the glass of sour liquor – delegated to me by the charming waitress – the mind played hoax and ruse on me. But it did it so astoundingly that even politicians would not protest. It leisurely took the thing in my mind: the Lu in my mind and painted her face upon the blonde one who eyed me with smiling lips next to me. Everyone became bewildered when a jubilant and very pleasing look arrived, a countenance that came from nowhere near or close.

I asked her for a dance. Roselyn was her name. Although I believe occasionally, now and then, I called her Lu. The dance-floor was filled with human bodies singing and dancing. It was as if the world was ending or someone had paid them. Soon after that we also started to join in the mania. The rhythm changed and everyone twisted around hand to hand in pairs. Roselyn took my hands and placed them in hers. Together we swiveled with smiling eyes as the world went crazy around us.

Like the earth and her moon, turning and turning to turn. With gravity persuading us to move in pathways only she may choose. We orbited around each other as only two can do. She stopped and slowly came to a halt looking as if a blonde beautiful Ferrari that one had to insist on riding. With her hands strapped to my back she passionately kissed me like her lips were crafted from strawberry fruit. Still the bodies around us were turning and turning to turn.

Like all good things, the music stopped and we returned to the company we shared.

"What is your line of work?" Roselyn asked.

"I write a few words on a paper" said I humbly. Everybody turned away disinterested. "I am a romantic novelist, I write words that can turn into a kiss or a frown or a heartbeat" I added "words that can hiss through one ear and slither through the other." I had won their interest. Hers even more; it was as if I had magnified the intensity of her interest in me tenfold. Questions followed, flying through like spread-out bullets. I always ruined the party mood when now and again I'd glance at my wrist.

"Guys, its 1 o'clock. I have to be going. It cannot elaborate enough how imperative it is that I wake up early tomorrow." But my few good friends, alcohol and a lovely night derailed my most solid of thoughts.

"You're still going to be here for two weeks, right?" Charlie questioned, after my affirmation, he insisted that we have an epic weekend; he was always calm in his speech and tone... a quality I'd always admired. As I later found out "an epic weekend" was somewhat of a tradition to them. They would buy liquor, 200 bottles at least – mixed in with tequilas, vodkas, whiskies, and other types of narcotics: intoxicants which were not for the faint-hearted. And in one perfect and lusty epic-weekend, they would lock themselves up in a house for epic tales of youth. The ladies seemed to be turned on by this when he smoothly explained. Thereafter in synchronous sequence, they all turned to look at me, like kids looking at their uptight father. I had reservations but I could use an epic tale of youth after my forlorn with Sunnyside mermaids.

We were now heading to Stones, a nearby nightclub which Charles suggested we go. On route, we dropped by Dark City NOT ALL ARE WELCOME the welcome sign wrote.

"I hope none of you is gay," Charles said. "God forbid this is the worst place to be gay." Nobody seemed to give his statement a second thought, but I wondered what he meant.

Driving in the dark night we saw fire; raging flames ahead of us with people cluttered all around. Stopping to quench our curiosity, I now evoke that we should have passed. We should have just passed. People were circling, throwing, cursing and loathing, as if they circled beasts, two beasts with horns. "Criminals," we might have all thought at first glance. But far from crooks they were.

What I failed to understand was how Dark City was notoriously known for its deep resentment towards homosexuals. That is, what the sign implied. They were burning two men alive. All that remained now was burnt corpses holding each other through the flying ash on the darkened ground. They must have loved each other through their burning flames, their curses and their vile hearts.

The Roselyn in my arms could do little but drop a few tears to their hellish ground (perhaps in the foolish hope of purifying it). There, in Dark City, I found it difficult to distinguish between men from brute beasts. The dark clouds of Dark City must have written, "This is no place for romantics. No place for romantic hearts." We then drove away in silence, with a deep haze of sadness filling the empty spaces in the car. Nobody felt eager to go to Stones anymore, not even Monde. It was 4p.m. when we reached my gate.

"Should I come in?" Roselyn asked. I could use some company although it would mean not catching up on outlying sleep. We barely slept as she showed me her tattoo and other antiques she had. She stood idly by next to a chair after reading the poem on the wall. Waiting there as if to say "Touch me like I've never been touched before", soon she was right on my eyes, and my hand felt her cloth covered breast and fast beating heart. Then her lips, then the tenderness of all her god-given-gifts. Soon thereafter those clothes that shielded her from the outside cold were a hindrance, her nicely placed tattoos dawned here and there but they all ended at the one place I wished to go.

By 7:30 a.m. she passionately kissed – her stranger in the night – goodbye, 8:30 I spoke at the seminar and finally by 10:30. My lecture was about to commence at the university. I called Lu and told her that she looked beautiful today.

"How do you know?" She smilingly asked.

"Because... It cannot be any other way." On speaking, I told her how I thought of nothing else but her.

"Come back," she said, "Sunnyside and I think of you now and then". I was glad she missed me as I did her. Everything had returned to its usual state; just two more weeks.

When I arrived at the venue that I was delegated to teach. As if the devil found amusement by surveying me from his lonely chair. At the front row, a blonde I knew so well, sat in the middle seat: her legs as I still remembered them. Roselyn was my student. Then I heard 'em, the ghosts of the city along with Jumbo screaming and screeching in my ear, "This is no place for romantics; no place for romantics!" "kind sair."

Chapter 4

A poem for Lu

Before returning to my beloved Sunnyside, Monde thought it wise to introduce me to Soweto, (South Africa's most infamous township). I had a deeply rooted conviction that I would abscond and depart with a splendid story to disclose. But further off the dotted mark of truth, my arrow of belief has never landed. I left only with a few swollen tears to shed for my dear country. The houses they lived in, the schools they went to and the heroes they came to know. Society was neither grooming them for president-ship nor the ownership of the rare crown of greatness but for a trifling and petty life. How when they had fulfilled their stars, bred by their environment, we had the decency to blame or point our adverse fingers.

My heartrending spirit was awakened when ultimately I met the one soul, who would bring a thrilled and elated smile to my face. I had been wrong all along. In my mind, I believed her to be nothing less than a thing my heart ached for – the way a child's heart aches for the sweetness of candy. But beyond that, I dogmatically categorized her as just another girl with a pretty face, pretty eyes and pretty lips. Although I had sensed that something special existed deep within my core when I was in her presence.

The universe in its vast complexity and incomprehensibility, sustains itself because everything, every piece of wood, every leaf on tree or every hair on head is at its place. This was how I felt when I was with her. Everything seemed to be at its place, the universe was at peace. There she was smiling at a distance along my way, shedding internal natural light to the now dark Sunnyside streets.

There was kindness in her voice. A soft kindness you cannot forge or mend from clay. She told me how she was studying to be a philosopher – a great thinker and one she was. The more she spoke, the more the dogmatic and overly skewed image that I had carried in my mind, evolved into its true form. Lu was liberated, in every sense of the word. She was not confined by the invisible cells of steel that continue to hold captive of most of our thoughts.

As we strolled, her and I, we spoke of the social injustices and economic challenges that hindered our beloved Africa from the fruits of prosperity. I recall a moment, while starring at her with bewildered eyes thinking, "There is one that understood me and shares my vision". Our agreement was short-lived; like dog years, we quickly came into an argument about whether such a thing as destiny existed. She was a realist and I a romantic, believing only in what she could see or discern from logical truth. "Destiny is just another word for privileged coincidence" Lu would say, but I wondered if this was all there was to it, whether an incident occurred in her life that made her loose all signs of faith in destiny?

It was peculiar how one's fortune could fleetingly change: the one moment I was in the cold heart of Joburg, drowning in Dark City; the next embraced by my beloved, smelling the Sunnyside air as if I were about to marry it and strolling with a dream on my side. There are things that require great thinkers of the past to grasp or solve. But, what was growing between us with every trade of slow words – that moved in the line that joined our moving lips –was evident to every man, dog and flying bird in the street. But less evident to us, when we realized it, I told her how I had an idea. An idea so sensitive so thin-skinned that it needs only be whispered from ear to ear, an idea, that we could be happy, an idea that we could fall in love. She smiled to look at the empty ground. "But dear Lu this idea cannot consume breath and come to life unless you share it with me." It was a night blessed as I exposed the idea of bliss hidden deep within her when Lu shared my idea.

The next day, as it normally happens to most conversations, one topic mutated into another until we spoke of how vital and central a kiss was. Lu disagreed on the grounds that a kiss held no real significance. She held the belief that it was merely a thing. Like a town we pass to reach the city, it was not an end in itself but a means to an end. She also conveyed to me how in all her years she has never fallen in love. When I peered further; she divulged also how she thought she was not a fine kisser – staring down at the rough silent concrete. This could not have been true. If perfect ever did existed, it would exist in the carvings of her lips – in the smoothness of her tongue.

There was a singular path that brave men took to find this out. How this would ruin the now perfect image I had. There stood Lu, her divine face in soft hand with her eyes connected to mine; with that bright moon acting as a torch to light her face. Our lips then slowly met. I believe the wind then cried out and God woke to stare from up above as Lu and I reinvented the romantic kiss, the long lost romantic kiss. Still buried deep in my arms, feeling the rise of the ambient air I wondered, "Could this be it. Could my long and futile search to find the one we lived to find over?"

As a romantic, I always believed our sole true purpose was to find the one we would die to find. How when you meet them, it becomes evident that you had only barely began to live. The completeness of one's soul never attained how one was all along a part of a greater whole: a piece in a piece of two. And words such as you or me would lose all form of meaning and only we would remain.

New love carries a heavy load that even the strongest among us is sure to feel tiredness at the knee. It is a sensation unlike any other imaginable to frail human thought. That feeling of unnatural happiness: compressed in a single instant in time. This was what I felt in the blue night after watching Lu shrink in the distant of the night. But would what I feel last till tomorrow? New love ends; even blissful honeymoons end. But I was thinking ahead senselessly as I usually do. The true horror which I should have feared was not the slow deterioration of affection, but a sneakier devil that snarled not far flung.

I had not written poetry in quite a while but she persuaded the romantic virtuoso within me to rise and write once more. On that blissful night, I composed a poem for Lu. Although something still troubled me, I could not tell or clarify with words what it could have been.

The next evening, although all parts of her that I could touch and feel were breaths away as she smiled – bewildered at the poem I wrote the night before. The intangible part of her eluded me. I could not feel it in our presence. She was highly cultured. Although I admired it, I felt it punctured holes between us, holes I could not fill with sand or mend with thread.

I was convinced that something had been holding her back to fall in love all these years. It was evident that it always existed the entire time like the soft silk sheets between us. "I know you have noticed," she said. "I can see it in the way you look at me. If you ask me I will lie to you. Please don't ask me". As I looked down I felt like I was a falling in love with a dream: a thing you could wake up from; a shadow on the wall. And I feared the very worst.

A few months went by. I was glad when I saw her and sad when I didn't. On one memorable day I recall us encountering an elderly couple sitting in the park. They were holding hands while looking into each other's eyes. It was a marvelous sight to look at maybe even partially spiritual. They had occupied that particular bench at the park for more than 50 years – we later came to know. 50 years! Nonetheless they looked as teenagers who had just re-invented love. The birds in sky above felt their presence as they circled them once or twice.

I decided to join them in the hopes that perhaps within them lived the old age secret – one of lasting love: a thing as elusive as forgotten dreams. Perchance, I thought, I could lift this curse of temporary love off my-now tired shoulders. Kind and welcoming, they both were, not minding my extreme curiosity and inquisitive nature.

"How did you first meet?" I peered. A gloomy smile then filled both their old and wrinkly skin, fleetingly taking years off their faces. Even in old age you could not miss the beauty that lived in her face. She described Shaun as a man, a real man and nothing less than a man. The way he expressed himself and the way he moved was as the devil and a saint trapped in the same exquisite body. Women wished to have him – even in their dreams, while men wished to be like him. This was what they prayed for. She further explained how she had nowhere to run and nowhere to hide; like being trapped on a tiny island surrounded by his all-embracing presence. The devil who wore Prada was mysterious, intriguing and his sweet words melted her heart. Weakened her at the knees, while his physical features excited her eyes and amplified her body temperature. What choice did she have but to embrace of Shaun for eternity and a day?

Leaving the two loving souls on their bench, I was still insensible and oblivious as to how to cage and embrace tender love.

"You know who I compare you too, in history?" she said out of the blue, while we were walking away

"Who? Shakespeare?"

"No, yes there are similarities, but no, Casanova – the great lover. Think about it" She added

I had never thought of myself as a great lover, at least not wholly. Some things can wake with you in the mornings and sleep beside you in the evenings without you catching a glance or a peep. As I thought deeply of what she'd said, I realized the truth in her words. How I have never seen myself in the perspective of my loves. I started noticing the tiniest of things: how I stroked her hair or moved in musical bearings and gazed in hypnotic manner. I was a great lover, perhaps, the greatest lover to have ever walked the earth – a thing that was paired with my romantic genes.

But here I was, a great romantic lover still perplexed by the workings of Lu. She possessed rare and precious beauty the kind bestowed upon to the most precious of all living beings. This much was evident, but would I ever see the colors of her heart? Would she ever cry for me, live for me... or glow for me?

How could I have been so dumb and blind and not have investigated her culture before? I realized that from birth children were paired together in matrimony for life. Could I ever break the invisible bonds that I now realized held her mind? Opting for her, who to and not to love. It all became clear; destiny was not made for her. It was an entity which blindly passed by.

It was a Wednesday, I loved Wednesdays: sitting on soft green grass, not too far from flowers of different colors. There existed a form of joy within us; I felt her heart beat as vividly as I do mine, and I knew that the diversity of our hearts was but a trick of the mind; an illusion to the white eye. It was here were all dead flowers rose and my heart inscribed her name. I felt her love swiftly piercing through my skin, a feeling that I so deeply yearned. Her teary eyes could neither be controlled by mind, heart nor sinew. I remember she loved me when her face was a breath away and her lips were lovingly close.

"I cannot do this" she then said. Her tears had not halted to breathe. She was fighting something you cannot fight a thing without face. Lu cried for me.

"His name is Jack," she explained and continued to tell how they were first introduced as infants – before she could even separate light from light. She was taught, much like young being taught religion, how to love him and only him. Lu grew up with less varied futures, but only one possible future: a life with the Jack on the hill. I was a man from a distant land and could not fully grasp and comprehend her thoughts.

I met my Lu on the worst possible of changing times. That very year she was expected to take his hand in marriage and spend eternity with a man that I now loathed. A man that now made her love to slip and fall on my fingers, slip and fall on my heart. The wind, I recall, was slowly blowing in our direction, continuously, (in the hopes of drying her tears I suppose).

She had a choice, she could stay with me. I tried to convince her. "If I don't return, they'll send collectors after me. Trust me; you don't want to be around when that happens."

"Then let's run away. The destination is not important. They have cars and trains and planes. Let's go somewhere – anywhere. I will love you in the trains in the planes, in that vast sea." I felt as if my life depended upon her proximity, upon her closeness.

She believed me, at least for a moment's while. She believed me. That was when her tears dried for me, and her smile smiled for me. Together we sat there to plan our escape. More excited lovers you could never find in blue earth. The plot was to buy a ship and sail around the world – to live like free men, to love like we lived in a fairytale. Out there, where there were no spears no arrows to aim for our backs.

When the night came we could not part, her hand refused to leave mine neither could mine hers. A few small steps apart were all we could manage, before the invisible springs pulled her back into my arms. Did the universe know that I'd never see her again? Did my heart know it would later die and bleed in vain? Was it scrounging for these last pieces of happiness? Now and again, she would run to me to expose the depth of her undying love for me. Lu glowed for me.

"Look at the blinking stars," she said. "I will love you in the presence or absence of each gazing star. Gaze upon them when I'm not in your arms, you will see the truth in those blinking stars." I did. I still do.

But the loveliness of summer night was neither made to last nor stay fresh in our hearts or mind or season. It was the last time I ever saw her. I heard varied stories. Others said that the collectors came and chained her to Jack; and, that they now have two daughters, two lovely daughters with their mother's eyes – their beautiful mother's eyes. Others said that she could neither be with the one she never loved nor let any harm come to the one she ever loved, so she took her own life to join the blinking stars in the night sky.

Perhaps one of these stories is true or none are true. One thing will always remain true, I hoped, and hoping still that one day I will gaze at the glow of my Sunnyside Lu

Chapter 5

My First

Love

In all the list of loves I can recite, among the several that mortified my heart – and the few others that filled it with nothing less than sheer delight – one was different. That love which comes before all others. Before they lie, hurt to ruin you. That love when you hid nothing and gave it your all. The one where you loved till it hurts. Before you started to doubt the very existence of precious love – we all have one, the first. The very first who taught us how to love. For me, her name was Fortunate, but I consider myself to have been more fortunate to have met her.

Among the astounding features Mr. Russell possessed, the one which stood out tall like Everest was how full his cup of life was. He would admire the spoken language of English as if he admired a woman – till today he remains to be my most beloved teacher. On Mondays we had what he called "The Romeo epoch", where I would quote the most interesting literary piece that I had read the week before. That day like all weeks following I stood up and quoted from the excellent texts I read.

There she was near the corner of my eye. With my eyes and the rest of my face tediously pretending not to see her attentive eyes perusing over my every word, comma and full stop. In fear of going to hell, I have to admit, I was rather quaint and strange at the time. I had friends. Oh I had many friends! Although they were all stuck on my undusted shelf in the pages of the books I read.

The next day in class Fortunate changed seats and came to sit with me. I had that feeling, the one where your lips would smile for no reason. I considered it above all other moments of feeling to be the single most delightful feeling ever felt by every inches of my body.

Her eyes held a layered story, although I found it thorny to read its tales. She carried a diary where she wrote all the things which flaunted her heart in the progress of the moving day. I once caught a glimpse of the contents she scribbled. I saw how she quoted me in every turn of a page. And, further wrote how she considered me to be the single most interesting being to ever have walked the face of the earth.

Knowing she liked me back, made me less tense and more relaxed when we spoke. She used to wait for me at the school gate in the mornings, even when I was late. She would wait and we'd both get punished. In those mornings she stood by the gate I remember it not being the sun, but her face that seemed to shine.

I feared the leap – the leap of telling her how I felt. It was not fear of rejection or disappointment which I feared but the one of change. My life was simple and safe. The change she would bring might weather and sink my ship of life. Was it not fair to read of how one can rip one's heart? Excavating it from one's chest to feed it to the wolves from its safe dwelling of its chest cavity? With yours being safe and intact in its protective cage. So now and then I would push her away. I regarded my solitude not as a heavy and miserable burden. But more precisely as a safe house where nothing could hurt me; a peep hole observation of the world outside.

But it soon became evident to me that I have not yet lived. I have read of the brutality of war but I have neither witnessed my best friend gasping for air – blood entwined with mud on his face – nor the smell of piles of men after a war. I have read of magnificent paintings and artists but I have never smelt or painted beauty through my hands. But most importantly, I have read of love – undying love. The sonnets of Shakespeare, and the poems of Landon, however, I have never felt what it was like to wake up next to a dream and feel truly happy. I may get hurt: my heart to bleed but for her it was a chance I would seize.

With her, I felt the smoothness of a kiss and the tender softness of a hug. It was beyond the narrative excellence of any book or the beauty of any poetic depiction. While the teacher taught, I only listened absentmindedly. Spending continued hours simply admiring her hair, eyes and those small ears she had. I was interrupted by Mr. Russell who asked me to recite the most interesting thing I read in the past week.

"I have read the best book ever written by the ten fingers of men," I told them. "I read the carvings of her lips. No, not lines that connect the stars but lips; I assure you, they are lips. I read all corners of a smile, and each one that I read every hair I counted made me be." She stood up and walked up to me like a sexy jaguar in the jungle to kiss while all my peers were starring.

I believe this was when I found it. Dear reader, there are 206 bones in the human body, all perfectly aligned, with one joining to the other in perfect harmony. That day I discovered my last bone, my last romantic bone.

Waves of rumor started to perpetuate through the school like a violent wind swaying long and slender grass in the field. That day when I accompanied her home she said,

"I want you to promise me something."

"Anything" I responded still drowned by her kiss.

"I need you to promise me that you will not fall in love with me" This was a strange thing to ask but I could not show my vulnerability thus agreeing to this misunderstood statement. Although I knew how late it was, I had already fallen deep and was now just drowning in her.

The days that were to follow, my smile hid my teeth and the sadness of my mind. Something caught my eye while we were filling forms. Fortunate stared hard at the blank space adjacent to illnesses with her pen almost touching to write. After seeing how interested I was she wrote none and passed. For years we loved like the world was fleeting and temporary.

Each time she said goodbye, my eyes grew teary. And I'd call god a liar for making her leave. You can hide some things but even hidden secrets find their way through the desert. Pieces of me died when I found out she was dying. That devilish cancer, "cancering" away her blood! Now it all became clear what she hid it from me, why she said I should not fall in love with her.

I remember how in the months that followed our smiles were replaced with dismay. I felt varied emotions in my young heart; yet the feeling – the thought that my first love was dying crushed my intangible soul.

Her mother called my house to tell me of her deteriorating illness; that they had to take her to the hospital. I reached the room she was admitted in. I was still sweating from scurrying up the stairs. I found her lying there with pale skin and lips. Her hair was now gone and hands were almost cold when I touched. She tried to smile and speak for my sake although I could barely make out what she said through the roughness of her poor mouth.

"What did you do to her?" I shouted at the doctor who was present. Interrogating him on the opposite wall – with my hands heavy on his white coat, I yelled, "Fix her!" Then I felt her cold hands wrapping around me. Her eyes were still joyful when I turned. We sat there on the floor, her in my arms till the nurses dragged me to leave when visiting hours had passed.

In the days which followed, the hospital became my school. VISITATION HOURS FROM 12 TILL 2, the notice would say. From 8 till 12 I'd sit by the opposite street to gaze high upon her window. We learned sign language so that our hands could communicate, when rules split us apart. I thought about her so our hearts could beat in unison, when space hid her from my eyes. We would sit and talk about never-ending aspirations: dreams and things. Her condition deteriorated with each day, dying with each breath that she bitterly inhaled. We prayed to the man in the sky each day and each passing night, but he was deaf to our prayers and dumb in response. With her rising soul, my faith and belief were leaving. The nurses came to understand that the words "visiting hours" did not apply to me. They meant very little to me.

Mr. Russell also understood and did his best to cover in my absence. "I had a dream last night," she said during my visitation. "I dreamt you standing here, we smiled and kissed," she smiled, I kissed her.

"Was I cool like the terminator in your dream?" I asked her, hoping she'd smile.

"No, you were you... the greatest man I'd ever known." She paused to play idly with my hands. "He has a plan; I know you don't believe it... but in my dream I saw it." She then held my face with her soft cold hands.

"Don't give up on him". With that she had breathed her last. Her eyes still solidified to mine. I held onto her for hours to come till her blood was cold and no more tears I had to cry. I cursed the one who lives in the sky. And I never wasted another prayer for him to hear 'till this day.

But today I'm in church no one understands why, starring at the caricature of the man on the cross; my eyes still teary from long ago in my fledging youth. With her words still ringing in my mind, "Don't give up on him." So perhaps I shouldn't.

Chapter 6

Romeo and

Juliet

There were grey colored monkeys tumbling in the dusty gravel roads. A landscape one would die for at any given day. A sight one could wake up to for centuries too without getting tired of gazing. As I silently stared into the lush fields I knew the course of my life was about to take an unexpected and dramatic turn. From the busy city were one's neighbors were distant strangers, you smiled at with your teeth. To a small village comparable to a large extended family where everybody knew each other. Were one had to smile with one's heart. I came with stories of the outside world: liberating my new found peers of the endless possibilities that lied beyond the horizon.

The death of my dearest Fortunate – the only love I ever knew – continued to occasionally swell tears in my eyes now and then. I consoled myself with the idea that she was too beautiful and angelic for this God-forsaken world. But I'm glad destiny is never blinded by night stains, moldy stains of the night. It brought me here to realize that there was another world which existed hand in hand with the civilized world I had left behind.

There were opaque similarities between me and a rough stone being chiseled and hammered into shape, by a true artist; little did I know that it would be the very environment that would mend me into the last romantic dreamer.

Here was where I met Helen, a person who would poison me to chain my soul to the pits of hell. But today, here was where I met Juliet; and where Juliet met me. Small houses, shops, streets and very few cars. Life was slower here. You could breathe and think unlike in the city where stars had died in the sky: where you could barely listen to yourself contemplate. I had a strong conviction that God had stopped manufacturing beauty or bliss with Fortunate. But something unexpected and unthinkable happened: time. In its slow progress it surprisingly brought comfort. The funniest thing about time is that it has the ability to turn a stone into a diamond, beauty into dust. The more days passed the more the memory seemed to haze and lighten. The pain never faded, it just became bearable.

Someone once told me that everything we learn we already knew. We are simply revising and taking ownership of our knowledge. I cannot disagree with him – the statement is simply irrefutable and seems wise. But I do agree with the essence of it. I believe I've always been a writer – a romantic at heart. But it was my silver Juliet who made me feel it in the deep feelings of my dreams.

I remember sitting in my newly enrolled school, my thoughts comparable to slow echo which followed sound: an echo which was still left behind in the city of Johannesburg: a city I now loathed. A girl then pierced through the varied bodies in uniform to waken my almost trance state.

"You're that new kid right?" she asked.

"Are you really from the city of gold?" She further questioned before I could reply.

"I assure you, the city is filled with a lot of varied things but gold is not among them, not anymore." She paused awhile.

"Do you have a name Mr.?"

"Romeo," She bottled a laugh when I said this,

"Was it something I said?" Before she could explain, everyone gathered around at the assembly point.

"I guess that's my queue. Oh, I'm Juliet." She walked away, and then looked back to catch a smile on my face. That was the first time I had genuinely smiled in a long time.

She was a singer; her silky voice touched us all, me more than the rest. As she looked straight into my eyes the entire time perhaps I had been wrong, not all beauty had died, some of it still lived in her voice.

The two years that followed we grew extremely close to each other. She was cultured to my deepest thoughts and some of the darkness that lingered in my eyes. She was the truest of all living friends. There was once a man, perhaps a scientist, before feeding his dogs he would ring a bell. At first the dogs may have found it humorous or at most silly. As time went by, each time he would ring the bell, saliva would spontaneously be produced in the dogs' mouths to show that they understood that the ringing signaled food. This was Juliet and I. With every ring of the bell, we thought of each other as we spent every spare time we could scrounge together, speaking about nothing and everything, sometimes both.

The thought that Juliet could be more than a friend never crossed my mind in those two years –until on one unexpected day –she informed me that she was seeing someone. I saw him stroking her hair as they talked to each other. "She hated that" I thought "Your doing it wrong"... Wait was I jealous, was this what romantic jealousy felt like? I pretended that I was alright; that the pieces which my body was composed of were still intact. But the truth was only known by my four-cornered heart. Parts of my soul died every time I saw his rough hands caress her tender skin; or his death-swathed breath poisoning the air she breathed.

Pride, the hallmark of my clan, but I had to wholly swallow it if I had any chances of winning her heart. I had grown to know her well: her laugh, her cry even her silent pauses between thoughts. The boundary which separated friends as us was a feeble foil which could blaze at the sight of my heart. How could I have possibly known that all those passing years Juliet held the words, "I am in love with you," just between her lips though never attaining enough zeal to pass through her lips?

There I was, the master, planning a romantic scene that would linger through the ages and motivate future time travelers to return to that moment in time to witness it. The boy did not deserve such closeness to those above. At least I would look the creator in eye to tell him, "You had your fun with my heart, she's coming with me!" In the wake of the yellow dawn, there we stood, not far from the other still not too close to the other. We both could feel that something had happened. Something had changed. Before the romantic scene could commence, before words could fall out of my mouth.

"I know," she said, hushing my lips,

"I know."The rest was left for historians to document.

Wise men dry their tears in the rain. In the years that came I dried all her tears and shared all her laughs. We would bask in the soft sun in the company of rivers and trees hours on end that flying birds would count. There was my silver Juliet singing to my ear through the wind. We had a joyous life.

But a gulf was present between us like the oceans that separated drifting continents. My beautiful lover had the simplest of dreams. We will have a small white house with a similar colored fence not far from where we live. Two kids, cats and dogs. Once she had started to illustrate, even I could not stop her from planning our future. I'd smile to listen sometimes I too would incorporate her dream into mine.

But it was never to be me. I had ambitious dreams. I yearned for time to bow at my presence and live the life of those who lived. "An extraordinary life fitted an extraordinary man," I thought. Although this began innocently, as if it could never scratch our bubble of happiness, it grew in our hearts like cancer of the heart.

She knew that my stay was only temporary; that a time would come when I had to leave. We both hated the clock that progressed ever so swiftly – with years moving at days' pace. "Why be hasty?" I solemnly remember that previous night with the morning sun separating us – her clenched arms refusing to let go, but I had to leave. I had stories and novels for the world outside. Yet my Juliet could not bear a day apart as her arms grew tighter around me, like a python squeezing my lungs; her tears falling on my skin and sorrowful words rushing to my ear convincing me to stay.

It was only after I made a promise, a promise that I failed to keep. That she tightly shut her eyes in the hopes of halting her tears. She tried in futility, as I wiped her tears I promised that I shall return in a small sum of time. "Promise...?" as she feverishly whimpered

"...on my last breath!" I then headed for the first time to the city of dreams – Pretoria City, where I later met with Fiona.

I called her each passing day; for hours we spoke. But the fast moving life was not made for lover's separated by empty space. It changed me, the city darkened my eyes. I called less and less till finally I stopped. To set her free I told her I had met another and that I was never coming back. I became a one eyed monster, a cold hearted creature fulfilling the prophecy of Romeo and Juliet.

After that they said she never sang again, I believe that was the day her music died. She has a son now. He has my eyes; they all say when I visit, "Junior has romantic eyes". When I met him with his mother, I saw my reflection in his. She desperately tried to speak yet her tears on the other hand failed to stay at bay.

Chapter 7

My last

Girlfriend

Times change, I was once a broken-hearted boy gazing at the distant space where I left a broken heart. A boy who once froze, and partially died, while staring at the sight of a corpse of his beloved. That boy was now a man: a famous writer in a famous city. But still with boyish dreams, my few romantic ideals of true love still lingered to adulthood. And I held the belief that Helen would be the cure.

Helen, where can I possibly start? Perhaps I should launch this train of thought from the earliest beginnings. But the beginning is so entwined with the end to confuse even the most incisive of minds as to which is which, and which is that. To begin with, the idea that we could ever be more than two disparate beings would have made a stubborn cat to laugh out loud, so to speak. She was my classmate and I happened to date her best friend whom the critics at the back of the classroom considered the most attractive girl in our school. It was deeper than that; I cared for the person lying beneath all the looks; but this story is not about her. This story is about Helen.

Besides the latter obvious hindrances, she was the skinniest person I had ever rested my eyes on. As it always happens to the best of us in life, Helen had to relocate. She left home to Pretoria: a city I was to be acquainted with in future years.

I would be telling a lie if I said the thought of her lived or at least visited my mind while she was away, while my face rested calmly in the soft hands of my Juliet, except perhaps for occasional remembrances of old times passed. Seven long years had elapsed until by immaculate design, destiny or chance, our paths crossed to touch. Not in Pretoria but at the place that we first met. At first I could barely recognize her. Her eyes and lips and body, especially her body, had changed. She spoke in a manner which enticed the ear to listen eagerly – her words slithering through one ear and being entrapped in the other.

We had a good laugh, after she told me who she was. We reminisced about how I used to tease her. Perhaps we could blame it on the exuberance of fun in the ambient air but after a few hours of conversation, she paused awhile, and said,

"You know, the funniest thing was that when you had made fun of me I would go home and cry myself to sleep each night. I was a foolish girl in love with you; in love with a dream."

I suddenly felt the winter chill crawling on my spine like a hideous eight legged spider.

"You had a crush on me?" That was all I could manage to say.

"No, not a crush; I was madly in love with you. But what could I have done? You called me sticky bones". We both laughed to sigh.

"And worse than that, you belonged to my best friend... and I know she loved you." I stared, a writer silenced by his own archived words.

"All the practiced smiles I would carry, it just became unbearable to keep at them. That's the reason I left."

With her hand now in mine

"What about now?" I asked. She denied it. Yet the smile that was building at the corners of her mouth gave her away. We sat there without a word watching the falling stars.

What I liked most about Helen was that she had this pure innocence that resided in her; the kind that still believed in true love, fairytales and things. She was the kind who would love you when you're collecting the scraps of your pride and dignity on the floor; when all about you have turned their backs and shut their sculptured ears. And she did; every day for two years, she did. We had planned our future. Moreover, I believed that Helen and I would grow old together; that I would hold her ancient and tired hands, kiss her wrinkled forehead and love her then soft-beating heart.

But how could I have been uninformed that even solid brown earth, a thing so unswerving would crumble mammoth buildings to the ground, or ignite to spew wild and hellish lava? I was in love with Helen or at the very least in love with the idea of her. When you've been dating someone for two years, who loved you for more than a decade, one tends to forget the most basic of things. Was I in love or was it an idea that was implanted in my head and evolved over shifting time to become truth carved in stone?

It was the day before Easter when I met Lerato's acquaintance. A temperate night: the wind was moving slow and the heat was fair. Lerato was lost to my Sunnyside streets, being only a visitor herself it was only natural. She had been traversing the night in futility not finding her destination, before we met, that is. "This place is like a maze." She said. "I just passed here a second ago". I promised I'd help her find north but little did I know that I was to help her find much more than that.

She was a professional model. My God, she looked the part! Light and soft brown eyes, thin bones but bulky were it mattered and that classic Afro made her look like those archived pictures in the museum. Along the way, we spoke of ideals we held close to our hearts and those we held afar. "Maybe I should have your numbers," she said, when we were about to part, "in case I get lost again." Her eye stealing spirit triggered me to make wrong decisions, like giving her my numbers.

My surveying eye, eyed her for a moment as she slowly walked away. And somehow I knew that lady destiny was not done with us. Two days later I received her call as drops of water were making their journey from the heavens in the strange moonlight rain.

"Don't you want to see your afro queen?" she asked while laughing. I did. For some reason I wanted to see her with towering intensity. As I had been thinking about her ever since.

"How about tomorrow when the sky has cleared?" I asked.

"What if it rains tomorrow, and every other day after that, will you never see me?"

The idea of never seeing her, although I knew only her given name, tortured me. We met in the falling rain. She was exuberant in the night rain.

It was on that precise moment that I felt my heart turning. For two years nothing took more ownership of my red-beating heart than Helen. But I felt it in my chest spiraling and shifting ever so slowly and ever so diminutively to the Lerato in the rain – the beauty in the rain. Something about her challenged all my years with Helen, our house made of nothing but bricks of future; was challenged. How I thought or the internal direction my heart chose to peek – was durably threatened.

Before the clock was against us, as usual, we would be far from the heavens and closer to the ground. But I remember our lips meeting closer to heaven and further from the ground. We sang to dance to laugh in the rain.

"Do you feel it?" she asked, while I remained mesmerized at her perfectly aligned features. And I felt it, like the very touch of her wet face. I felt it.

"What is it?"

"The sole greatest word in the English dictionary: passion." She was right, none like any I've ever felt before.

I compare the phenomena to a scenario where on meeting a stranger, a sense of eternal hatred emerges from whence hate came. Thus if I can hate a stranger without reason, then perhaps it was possible that I could love someone I had just met. My theory was that I loved her before I even met her. Meeting her was only another event that followed.

In the following days, Lerato and I were inseparable as twins or herds of sheep. With her the laws of eternal time were betrayed by passion in the passing wind. I would live countless centuries only to feel that youth still embraced our kind. Lerato and I had caught the Shakespearean love of obsession: an outburst of passion. It was now ghostly certain that I was in love with two women, and to make matters worse, two women were in love with me.

Helen paid me a visit after the day of the rain – when my eyes were fastened to the ground with shame after catching the sight of her. For some bizarre reason she pondered about life – the things I hoped for: my eternal dreams. I kept rambling on and on about success and the direction that my life was taking, thereafter I unknowingly directed the following question upon her, "What about you sweet love, what do you want out of life?"

"What I want, or more precisely what I need," she smiled innocently as she always did "what I pray for each night... is for you to love me" she took my hand, placed it on her slow-moving chest while looking at me with adorable delectable eyes, "... to have your heart." A tear swelled up in my eye, she missed it, followed by thoughts of remorse. I narrated a tale; I always spoke of tales, so a tale I told.

There once lived a man in the old times of Cecily. We all know how most people can go their entire lives without finding true love, but how fortunate was he for finding not one, but two loves. The tragedy – the deep curse – was how he loved them both at the same time. To the majority of ears this might not be as dire, and not even deserve to be told in a tale. But to him, the bearer of the cross of his two doves, it was hell. His heart torn between two women, wanting only smiles on their faces. He became sick when he realized what pleased the other destroyed the smile of the other. After many years the poor man from Cecily went sick and mad like the lunar moon which dances when you look away. Till finally he wrote letters to his two loves, to come to his chambers at noon... when noon came the two eyed each other for the first as they looked at his self sliced heart divided in two – one for each, at his blood filled bed.

"I wished not to follow the poor man's fate", I thought, while reciting the story to Helen. She should have known something was wrong as I only communicated my deepest thoughts through tales. Perhaps she chose not to see it. Whatever the case, the cross of the two loves weighed heavily on my back.

Telling Lerato the Cecily story, she said, "He should have closed his eyes and kissed them both; the one he envisioned would be the one he truly loved." It was admirable advice; any advice was good advice. So I kissed them both: my beloved Helen and my exuberant Lerato. Although I was still a man filled with confusion, one thing was certain. Whoever I envisioned and chose would be my last girlfriend, my very last girlfriend.

I had to make a decision. In the boat of Helen there was one that would follow you to the fires of hell: with her hand in mine saying, "Let them come, let them devils come!" The other being the Titanic: filled with ample fruits of exultance in its journey; but perhaps also decease in the end. Two boats – one secured with solid panels which would deliver me to the shore. But was deliverance more important than a significant journey? These questions ran through my mind.

We met a rather odd lady; the type you could not describe yet could sense that something strange was lurking within her soul. She was lost though eagerly interested in our relationship than finding her way. "Take care of him." she said to Lerato before she disappeared.

"I thought you didn't recognize me." Lerato said.

"How could I have forgotten you?" Like a cat I began to be curious as to where they knew each other from.

Lerato explained how she met the odd lady on the very day we first encountered. Strange it is that were it not for her we would not have met. She "high-jacked" Lerato and roamed with her in the streets; as if a surprise party was being assimilated for her and she was buying the currency of time. Later, after glancing at the time she abruptly said,

"You can go now, I'll be OK. Oh, if I were you I'd use that street". Pointing at the street Lerato and I first met. Could Lerato and I have met lady fate? She believed in God and destiny, so she was convinced that it was divine intervention. Even I – a non-believer – was convinced that the invisible forces of the universe had brought us together. However, I had a decision to make.

It became evident what love meant, because one person loving another unconditionally and limitlessly does not constitute love. Love is when both hearts feel as the other does. We all love in different ways in different times. Love is when a perfect harmony of affection is shared by two individuals.

My fears were confirmed when my lips touched those of Helen, Lerato's picture formed in my mind. It was a revelation to the thoughts at the back of my mind. At that precise moment, I knew that Lerato was to be my last girlfriend. I assure you, there was neither a painless nor serene way to tell her – someone who has loved me for a little more than a decade – of how my heart loved another. She broke into a violent storm of tears as if being stabbed with blunt steak knives through the chest. "There is no other possible future without you." She said. Though it tore the inner bits of my soul I pretended to be cold as if bringing tears to her eyes was not enough.

I justified the pain that lived between us as a temporary inconvenience. It was better then being with her and bringing wail and suffering to her for all the days we live.

I was at peace with Lerato. I'd be the person who remains when all cameras shut down and everyone is away. We understood each other. I had never found such effortless bliss in all my days. I asked her about what she had planned for the future because I would love to watch her grow old with me. We got engaged at the rooftop of my building, not far from those ever present stars.

How wrong I was to believe our dark days were far behind, somewhere in the rear-view mirror, while we drove off to the land of happily ever after. What was to be our happiest day was just around the corner, the day I would make her a romantic's wife. The basic laws of relativity did not apply to how fast news travelled to Helen's ears, hearing how another now lives her dream.

Her visit was unexpected, begging me to denounce my love for Lerato. Something was very wrong with her; the Helen I knew had taken a vacation, replaced by a dark angel with cold eyes. "You don't love her. Tell her... you don't love her!" Handing the phone to me, "It's OK I forgive you... call and tell her there is only one woman for you." She was right; there was only one woman for me, but not in the way that she had expected. She grew as fierce as a tiger fighting for her cub when I refused to do as she had asked. I was oblivious to the kitchen knife she held next to her spine. It was not until she pointed it right at me with lethal intentions that I began to notice it.

Somehow I was quick and I overpowered her to seize the knife, constricting her hands. What I saw in Helen's eye and face could make Jesus return earlier than expected; in fear for the world. "It is not just blades that can kill you, lover boy." She laughed derisively, teeth and jaws exposed; looking at the glass of wine she gave me a while back.

"Helen, what have you done?" Staring alertly at the half-empty glass of wine that left my hand a few moments earlier. Her grip was getting weaker as her eyes could no longer stay fixed upon mine.

"We belong together, just like the song. There's no Lerato where we're going; just us." My strength was now fading, like clouds and I could no longer hold her upright. She was smaller; I believe that is why she had blacked out first. There we were laying on the floor, like old iron – our bodies rusting away.

"Helen wake up, sweet love. Please wake up!" She remained silent and lifeless on the floor. My vision was becoming blurry with each passing of a second. I held her hand, kissed her lips and told her how foolish I have been, how sorry I was.

It was as I had not envisioned it. But the day had come, the day when the last romantic would die, were all love about to turn to hate? In all my years I have lived without regret, loved when love showed her brow; my romantic dreams were now coming to an end without ever finding the one we live to find. At least I had left my pieces in the list of hearts that I have known. The world will remember me through these quantities of my unseen burning love. Let them remember how fiercely I loved; how romantically I lived – how I was a romantic to the very end.

Providentially, that was the precise moment when Lerato came in, welcomed by two dying lovers on the floor: hand to hand and lip to lip. I would neither have held a grudge nor became a haunting ghost if she would have left us there. But I am still glad that she chose to help us instead.

The emptiness was an intuitive sign that she was gone when I woke up in my hospital bed. My Lerato in the rain was gone with the rain. Like the man of Cecily, death followed, but not death of the body but the death of my lonely heart.

Chapter 8

Us, Romantics

Although much was utterly vague and ambiguous, I instigated to question the romantic curse of old. How we can so easily find the fruits of love, nevertheless, easily suffer their loss like the feeble minded. Was there not one in the 7 billion breathing souls whose heart beat solely for me? With my delicate affection forever exposed to the harshness of the wind, everyone I loved seemed to evaporate much faster than boiling water.

Love was not meant to last for my kind. Always preordained and intended to be blazing; but yet passing. I now accepted it and as a result: embarked on the one thing I could – to bury myself in my work. I wrote fairytale endings but deep in my sleep I understood that happily ever-after only happened in tales. In real life, love, if any, was time's fool.

Although the inhabitants associated with my circle of life did not notice, as I always tried to wear a few smiles so that the reflection on the mirror did not seem queer. Deep down, I was awfully damaged and broken beyond repair: worse, I had given up on the one we live to find. I could not help but feel my aloneness. I was the master and conqueror of empty space; of nothingness.

On the other part of the world, beyond the arc-shaped mountains and the blue colored sea, was Violet. I durably believed that she was the greatest poet of our time. I fell in love with her use of words – the passion that lived and breathed within her poems. Somehow, although I failed to find the most defined words to explain it I felt connected to her through cosmic strings of an outlandish nature; the kind of love that can only be described by the mathematical ingenuity of those most astute among us.

Violet was an American poet. All her life she never felt an inkling of that feeling we all yearn for: that of unconditional belonging. In the other part of the world, there I was – a broken-hearted romantic writer. The last true romantic wasting away like rusting steel in acidic rain tired of his heart being tormented by wolves with blood-thirsty teeth.

I had given myself to random women and random types of drinks. Little was I aware that Violet fancied my written works greatly. The very first communication we shared was a beautifully crafted email she sent – with the extinction of letters in our age only a few of those still linger. She was seeking permission to use one of my stories in her upcoming lecture.

The world was rapidly changing. Some of us – dinosaurs among humans– were barely keeping up with the daily advancements in this technological era. It made it effortless and an unadorned task to share words through the gulf and vast vacuum that separated us. Words in bits of code soon altered to evolve into a more personal form. She gazed upon my beloved Sunnyside in the pictures that I transmitted to her. I wandered of the culture and night life of New York City in the images she lovingly shared. As time progressed, Violet became the reason I held on to this thin rope of life. To be the last candle light in the windy winter rain I was embraced in.

Till today I cannot tell you how she arrived at the idea of coming to South Africa. Whether it was to see me or the landscape it remains a mystery. What she told me was this: "an unnatural form of gravity has always pulled and propelled me to the south or perhaps more specifically, to you". It is written in the ticking laws of the universe that all time shall pass thus the day came, the one we'd been waiting, for all the days of our lives. I remember it having no imperfections. There were neither clouds crying for rain nor angry wind longing to howl; only fair sky and silent wind. While I stood waiting at the airport I did not know whether I was to shake her hand or embrace her tenderly when she came.

I was not a man prone to nervousness but on the day of Violet's arrival all kinds of anxieties were making a mockery of me. It was as if I knew that something extraordinary was about to happen. My nervousness quickly took a sharp turn to the darkness when news reached my ear, that there was rough turbulence in the skies. The plane Violet boarded was buried in the heart of this turbulent storm. I could only imagine the panic, the horror and the uncertainty that she now faced.

Hours passed, only news which persuaded the ear to cry came forth. I stared at my distant, serene and blue sky. Then without a warning or a whisper, it violently began to change: swirling winds and dark clouds hid flashes of light. It was but a diminutive glimpse of what Violet was embraced in.

In that hellish weather, that threatened to take my last breath of air and shred of hope, again I became keenly aware of my aloneness, my cheerless forlorn. For the first time in many faithless years, I kneeled and believed in the man in the sky. All his teachings, I begged and implored him just this once to gather my words in his ear and deliver her to my shores.

Turning back with almost teary eyes there she was. I can say a lot about how I came to be. How I took my first fresh breath of air. What more can I say? Above and beyond that the first glance upon her peeking beautiful face and long wavering hair gave me my first breath of life. It was evident in her smile and rushing open arms that a handshake would not suffice. She was shaking like a leaf that was intimidated by the wind. Her eyes were wild and sad, although still gorgeous in the presence of sadness. She held me as if holding on to a log in the vast blue sea, one that either held life or death. It was then when I knew that if she had not travelled immeasurable distances and raging storms to find me. I would have found her.

It was revealed in her touch, speech and thoughts. That she was the one I'd wait for countless centuries, and boundless eternity for. Violet was my kind – a romantic. My aloneness was now but a thing of ancient times. Two romantics in what she called a foreign land. It did not come as a surprise when after looking around; she said in soft sigh, "I am home". Following her words, the clouds timidly cleared with the colors of the sun peaking in the sky. I could be wrong, but the sun shined a bit brighter and the sky had a stunning blue that I had never seen before. Yet in all this, my Violet's sight was worth a million skies, suns and lights.

During dinner we couldn't wait to be absorbed in each other's anticipated sentiments. I was fascinated by her every word. Even the silences between her words fascinated me. She asked why I had stopped writing. It was worse than sin to her. I found words to convey the curse I was carrying. Soon thereafter – with her face lighting up the dull walls of the room – she said, "You should write of about it; at least your last words; your final gift to bestow to the earth." Together, reader and writer, we spent continued months writing the last romantic dreamer. With each word I wrote; each word she read, a thing one can never take; a thing I cannot explain; was everlastingly present between us the whole time.

I soon realized that all along my list of loves where preparing me for her. Fortunate to take a leap of faith; Fiona to see more than what the eye can see; Helen to expect the unexpected; the list is endless. I witnessed it in her eye and experienced it in the passing wind; that one after the other, of my dear loves were building bridges and tunnels for me to find her... All the suffering and pain so I could appreciate her; temporary love, so I may find eternity within her.

At last we could now breathe having had found the one we were meant to find. With all my past afflictions and tears behind me I realized that there was no truth in cynical statements such as how love was designed to bring pain. Being with her was more effortless than breathing, less demanding than listening to soft music, or the pleasant sight of rare painting on eye. Thus I carved in stone the eleventh commandment which the creator so diligently forgot, that ALL LOVE WAS MADE FOR US.

In my time I have seen brilliant stars in the dazzling night sky; awed at the beauty of changing colors of the sunset; but in the entirety of the creator's work, I believe her to be his greatest work. And if there comes a day to wander about what had happened to us, gaze upon the brown earth and the tender blue sky... that is where we live and die. That is where you will find the last of the romantic kind.
