Our Brief Heavenly Hour – A Short story by Karimi Kendi, Kenya

I am trying to love myself through your eyes because every time you call me sexy, it feels like a lie. This lie does not come from your lips but from my mind. You are like a wishing well, like a good dream on a bad day, so when I feel I am in pain, from your well I draw all thoughts that turn the remaining hours into a happy day.

My hand is on your chest, and so are the sun’s rays. The gods are looking at us all perplexed for what we have seems like a play, but all our hearts are at rest on this morning of an April day. They can’t predict what next we’ll do but they know what is mine is yours too. They can’t guess the words that will come running out of my mouth, but they know the words will come directly from my heart and into yours.

Lying on this bed, you call me sexy again, and first I think about the stretch marks between my thighs before my mind reminds me of the extra fat flapping above my pelvic arch. You raise your head to kiss my neck as I sink in yours. My bed will smell like your body today, enough for me to sleep as if I’m in your arms. You ask me about my plan for the day but I’m still thinking about fat and stretch marks.

You meet and hold my gaze as we cherish our brief heavenly hour. You know about my insecurities but you don’t point them out by name, instead, you show me how they hold no weight to you by kissing them over and over again. A cry from me is a call to you that I should come collapse in your arms like the way a whale finds its mate when it sends its cries through the ocean waves.

I’m trying to love myself through the smile you paint when you look my way. When you call me sexy, I smile, say thank you, then look away. I am as happy as a bee in a giant flower field. Today it’s my breast that’s heaped upon your chest, six years after you first pressed your lips against them. And then it’s seven, and then it’s eight, and then it’s ten years of you looking my way. What my lips can’t say is that I’m still shy about my breasts’ weight. When you cup them in your palms as I press my skin closer to yours, I forget about their weight as my shyness fades away. But when you release them from their happy day, they are met by the gravity of the earth, and the only way they can look is down at what’s pulling them under.

My hand is on your chest where your hairs are now grey. I remember when I first feared to call you babe and now I do it every day. I remember my fat and my stretch marks, still present on me today in my winter days. When we were up and about like spring and her many colours, we were busy bees who still made time for each other. Now we lounge on the couch with our eyes closed, my hip in pain, your lungs in strain, but we’re young in the deep of our hearts. The children say, when asked by friends, ‘we want a love like our parents’. Strangers come and go when we’re seated on a bench in the park and say, would you look at that! They want what we have but they don’t know that it’s your magic powers that have seen us through the seasons of our life. They don’t know that you grew a field of flowers in my mind, and out of the dark, my shyness was dissolved like a candle in the daylight. They should know that a good man is not the one who buys you flowers but one who comes with a watering can to irrigate what seeds of flowers you already have growing in your heart. Love gives birth to love as pollen does to flower.

Lying in our bed, you call me sexy again, and first I think about how true that is and how silly yet lucky I have been to have a man like you with me. I think about the flat-chested girl who wishes she had my heavy chest, then about the barren woman who wishes her stretch-marked hips had been where mine have been, then about the virgin girl who’s too shy to let her stomach be seen as I’m pinned under the love of my life like a mattress is pinned under the sheets. I have loved myself through the smiles you have painted all along our days and though we have had our grey moments, we have never let the day sleep in the height of anger.

You meet and hold my gaze as we cherish our brief lovemaking hour before my hip and your lungs launch a complaint. You have known about my insecurities but you have never pointed them out by name, instead, you’ve shown me how they hold no weight to you by kissing them over and over again. A cry from me is a call to you that I should come collapse in your arms, like the way a whale finds its mate when it sends its cries through the ocean waves.

You meet and hold my gaze as we’re lying on this bed. My hand is on your chest, and I have fallen in love with myself.

Read – The Woman Called Tamaa – A Short story by Linda Achiaa Awuah, Ghana

Published in the November 2021 Edition of the WSA Magazine