Blood and bloom
We share a name in our grandmothers’ mouths.
The same blood. The same laughter in our eyes.
Blood flows in our veins,
and ours calls to each other like rain to thirsty soil.
I love you the way dawn loves the earth:
without permission. Without apology.
Your voice is home,
but the door is locked by ussiko
By old laws whispered at family fires:
“Induku ayinamuzi”.
Love between us builds a house with no roof.
We sit at weddings for other people.
Your hand. An inch from mine. White cloth between.
Things do not happen unless meant to.
Yet here we are. Meant and unmeant in the same breath.
I watch you braid your hair.
“Ubuhle bendoda zinkomo zayo”
but all my cattle couldn’t buy us a blessing.
So take this dowry:
love unspoken at funerals, too loud in my chest.
If marriage is commitment
then we’re bound. Just not by rings.
Bound by childhood at night,
by secrets under our mothers’ noses,
by the ache of isililo sangaphakathi.
Go. Marry the man they’ll ululate for.
I’ll clap with the uncles. Swallow my heart.
“Isizukulwane asiboli”
I won’t twist the branch of our tree.
But know this:
When the world is quiet, I still call you My love.
In another life without blood and custom,
I’d spend eternity with you.
In this one, I honor you. But fate’s against me.
“Umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu”. You made me human.
Ngiyabonga, even if I can’t be umyeni wakho.
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