Familiar | Panashe Ndou
Photo by Elia Pellegrini on Unsplash
A piece that focuses on the potency of connection and intimacy. How people can have such a lasting effect on you that parts of you become parts of them and vice-versa.
Anyone could tell you I was too shy for a party like that. Lights, incandescent, fairy and strobe, the like. We were introduced through a friend in an instant, thought nothing of it at the time. Glazed in glim, his gaze was motionless. The subtle zest I sensed was bluff, fleeting, I was nescient at best.
It wasn't but a week before, a hue of green, a so ethereal green, glowing for Gatsby's eyes woke me still from my sleep. I was helpless just the same, his eyes broke through and caught my gaze far beyond any sense of presence. I had no way of knowing, I was dim, and he was like starlight to me, a pastiche, a promise. He walked with me down roads and sides streets I had been down before, they seemed foreign to me then, I could explore them anew with him. There were secret paths and bike paths we rode down alone to nowhere. He made days seem longer, stretched moments to eternity. Time was never more elusive than when I was with him, days and nights bled into each other; we stargazed through middays and felt limitless.
Shopping bags, tote bags, durags and dry rags; we shared our lives and our space, they moved into each other and found their place there. Nothing was unfamiliar between us; we were all too familiar to call ourselves anything other than what we knew to be us. We treated our vices as strangers, lilting by them with fugacious bliss.
He had a way with people I found alluring, when I shared my demure, I felt guilty. He left my way to people open, in ways I felt frightened to explore myself. I wasn't brave, he was arcane, the people between us grew together regardless. We were cultured in different ways, raised to be fair more often than not. It brought a dissidence true, but so few that we were never aware - or simply didn't care.
Mango custard, cinnamon, ginger, chickpeas and cereal treats, a random assortment scattered about his kitchen, we ate unadorned, by the light of an Ikea candle - it was running out. It poured outside. He read to me in Italian while I painted him with gouache paints; it was the only way I knew how to show him what he showed me. A silent night; lulled to rest by the sound of a heartbeat that mimicked my own. We were all too familiar.
There was a fire, I remember, bright red orange with golden embers. It burned to keep us warm because it was cold outside. His father lit it; he said that I reminded him of himself when he was younger, I smiled. It was cold outside. His brother told me I was starting to sound like him; his mother said, with love, that I was welcome anytime; his sister brought her wife, they expelled life of efflorescent vim. Still, it was cold outside. I wondered if they knew. I wondered if my family would be the same. I knew they wouldn't. It would never be. It made me realize, I was got a different type of love, I accepted what I got, and it was fine, but still, I envied his even though I felt it myself then. He saw my thoughts and whispered puerile jokes that always made me laugh, brought me back to that warm present they made real. Still, it was cold outside.
The next day was warmer. We walked bucolic byways and riverbanks. Dandelion seeds blew briskly, breezing past us subtly with ease. I tried not let thoughts intrude. How did I feel at home in this place I had never been just because his hand was in mine? I looked at him bathed in sunlight - my serendipitous elixir. I had nothing give, I was and still am, earning what I am. Yet there we were. He was out and I was open. I took time for us and kissed him slowly. He did the same. For that moment, that ephemeral moment of felicity that seemed infinite, it was like we didn't exist.
…Life has such wily ways of finding our weakest spots when we least expect it...
You had my devotion. Calm and soft as it was, you had it. I felt you when you weren't around, and there are times when the pearl moon cries, that I still do. If I knew then that we weren't enough to make each other whole, I wouldn't change a thing. I am broken, still, as are you, but my pieces are yours and yours mine. They cannot be traded, cannot be changed. The more there was of you, meant the more there was of me. I gave you so much of myself and I don't even want it back, I know you'd say the same.
I remember everything, I remember it well. Every step, every breath, every kiss. Your voice was like music...I could still hum it, if I let myself.
It poured outside, that dawn I walked the parkland promenade. The lampposts gleamed with a cynosure of queer desolation. They turned off when the light hit the horizon. In the downpour I brushed past a stranger. Whatever convinced me then I cannot tell, but I thought it was you.
It was cold outside.
About Panashe
He/him
Panashe is a South African writer who studied at the University of Edinburgh. He hopes to further grow his passion for his creative interests.
