How does one walk? My memory, like everything else, fails me. It’s one foot in front of the other,  right? Okay, but is it one foot at a time or is it both simultaneously? If not both, then which foot starts? Which leads, which follows? Most importantly, am I seriously having an existential crisis over how to walk, in the middle of the road, no less? My preoccupation with finding answers to these super important life-altering questions causes me to lose my step and trip over air. Not over a  stone or a pothole but actual, literal air. The kind that is fleeing my lungs and colonizing the space in my head where my brain would normally be. I blame all the chick flicks I’ve watched for making it look so easy. Winning back the love of your life takes five minutes flat and there’s always swelling romantic music in the background. Instead, in my low-budget production, I get to dust red dirt off the side of my leg and hope no one saw me. 

I feel the crows in the nearby trees start to stare and like a revelation, it dawns on me that I’ve been frozen in this exact same spot for far too long. So much for not drawing attention. My only comfort is that no one here knows me, or what I am here to do. Most importantly, they do not know who I  am here to see. Anonymity is the shield I cower behind as I resume my journey. Two left turns and three flights of stairs later, I stand outside her flat. I check my watch. I am two minutes early but I  cannot let her know I am here already. It will make me seem desperate. And so, like a child trying to fall asleep, I count to one hundred underneath my breath and then softly tap the door with my knuckles. 

She opens the door and waves me in, careful to say nothing. There is no need for superficial words between us, never has been. An inviting eyebrow arch from her doubles as a question of whether I am sure about being here. I shrug. It’s a maybe. She crosses her arms over chest, loose braids falling out of her lopsided ponytail. Maybe is not good enough so I respond with a hesitant nod. She is still not convinced. Doubt clouds her eyes like a hurricane over the ocean. It’s so scary, it’s beautiful. Or maybe I am scared of its beauty and how it makes me feel. No, no, no, I think to myself. This is not the time for fear. She wants to leave me because I am afraid so I have to be anything but. I don’t want to be the scared little girl who hides from the storm anymore. I want to be the woman who was born to chase it. 

I exhale all the air that was trapped in me on the way here and I float on it like a cloud all the way to her lips. In her kiss, I taste freedom and it tastes divine. This is how revolutions are born. The feeling of rebellion is intoxicating. What would her neighbors call us if they knew our secret? They must not be aware of our relationship or they would have thrown her out on the street, knowing fully well women like us are plastered all over their deleted search history. We would know. We are the experts of deleted histories and erased stories. We live them. We are them. Yet, that is a  battle for another day, another decade, another generation. The only name I care about tonight is mine, and the way she sweetly calls it. 

Together, we sink onto the bed and it creaks in outrage at the unholy union that is about to happen along its length. The curtains are joined together in matrimony, united in keeping the light out, but the sun and the windows conspire together and sneak in tiny streaks of dying light. All I can think of when I look at her is that she is beautiful and so am I and there is no shame to be found in beauty.  I am convinced to my core that I was made to love her and to hold her and everything else I have ever done with my life has been a perversion of my calling. 

I reach out my hand to cup her face but she draws back. I know why. She wants more than I can give her. She wants to hold hands on the street and kiss me under the tower light on the corner. She cannot stand the distance I leave between us when we walk in public or the way I recoil at her touch when people are looking. She wants me to be brave, the way she is. I can still make out the scars on her back from the last time the police raided the Harare Queer Collective meeting. She shrugged it off because they released them forty-eight hours later and didn’t press any charges but I know it stayed with her. It stayed with all of them. And I also know that she would do it all over again. “I’m too bright of a light to keep hidden in a closet, my love.” All she wants is for me to shine with her, intolerant world be damned, but I cannot bring myself to do it and we both already know this. 

SIBONGUMUSA NCUBE was a transfer student from Zimbabwe.