ROGUE DAMSEL

“Babe it’s your birthday! Happy birthday my love.” That’s what his whatsapp status read as the caption of a picture of a beautiful damsel he had posted at exactly 12.01AM. That is the best picture he had of her. In the picture, which was from a photoshoot he arranged with Yobii, a brilliant photographer – she was dressed in a black leather jacket, blue pair of high waist jeans and a pair of sexy platform pumps boots with snakeskin at the ankle and a lace-up. He bought her the leather jacket and the pair of shoes. The pair of tight jeans adorably and proudly exhibits her curves by the hips. The hips that don’t lie. Call it the curves of life, made without a compass. He used to tell her that she is blessed in a figure-eight-ive (figurative) way. She loved that.
He is a poet. It’s what made her fall in love (allegedly) with him. Mjangos would wonder how such a beautiful damsel fell in love with a guy like him. Not that he wasn’t good looking. But if looks were to be expressed in the language of wealth, he’d be in the middle class. For instance, if his face was a car, he doesn’t have the type of car that would make a lady scream while throwing rapid tantrums with their hands and legs. That’s the type of car that when she sees, she’d say, “Anyway at least you have a car.” No morning would pass without having him send a piece of poetry to brighten up her day. Not just her day though, to brighten up her love for him too. They say love is like a fireplace, the fire will only be as big as the amount of coal you throw in.
They first met when he was performing at a gig in Alliance Francaise a year ago. He played the acoustic guitar as he spoke poetic words along to a melancholic tune. For some reason, her heart beat to the rhythm of the strings. The words he spoke, creatively composed from his heart not with the intention of winning himself a darling from the audience – slowly hijacked her heart. No, first it felt like she was being held at gun point. The poem seemed to talk about someone like her. A girl who loves without loving. She awakens the love in a man without the intention of loving him. Because there’re men out there who have set their hearts to love truly. He was faithful, caring and all the crap that counts in a stable love relationship. And as if that is not enough proof that he is the type of man she has never had, the devil kicks down the door to heart, enters and shits all over the place.
But then, the persona in the poem hopes she changes. In fact, he prays. He prays that the cleaning crew of heaven will take a visit to heart. So that the girl who was made to love a good man and love for real may resurrect. Even if she won’t resurrect, may she reincarnate, some day. You see, she almost shed a tear. She stopped herself from shedding anything. That tear would be the evidence of her regret for what she did to her previous boyfriend. The poor boy decided that if he wouldn’t have the overdose of her love, then he really had to overdose on something else. He chose pills. He wrote a letter saying, “If loving her was wrong, then these pills will be just what is right.” In those few hours he was an inch away from death in the ICU, unlike what people say about seeing the gates of heaven; he was being frog matched to the lake of fire. Though he doesn’t remember that in his cognitive senses.
She has never told his poet lover about how she was the reason behind a man’s suicide attempt. No wonder he had never had any conviction whatsoever that the same would eventually happen to him. Just like his looks, his pockets, wallet, walking style, speech, behavior, background, food and job was middle class. But like all other men who know they have to have a sense of responsibility whenever they bag the woman of their lives, he never stopped hustling. She was always touched by his hardworking nature. But she would soon become discontented because in her eyes, the only sign of his hard work remained to be his nature. He would disapprove that for a minute by surprising her with a phone call, calling to ask whether she is available for a date at Valley Coffee Shake Restaurant along Biashara Street. Or the leather jacket she wore to the photoshoot that he bargained for nearly twenty minutes in Gikomba. She thinks he bought it from an exhibition at Jade’s collection. He has never been confident enough to tell her the truth. Or the heels with the snakeskin at the ankle. Yea, he was confident about telling her where he got those from because he bought them from Alibaba.
Well, to some extent, he is to blame for his own lack of unpreparedness for the disaster that would keep him under house arrest for more than a month. Never to see the sun or breathe fresh air because of the cowardice that would surge up through his nostrils every time he would breathe in. The cowardice to face the world again after the love of his life openly denied him during her birthday party. No you didn’t hear that well. She had the audacity to call off their so called relationship in front of all their friends. His inner man faints all the time when he tries to figure out what would have led her to that. As a matter of fact, his inner man dies when the only reason he can draw is the high class and good looking kind of a man that stood holding her waist while she said those despicable words to him. That waist that he desired to hold as they dance along to the Happy Birthday song by Bongo artiste, Harmonize.
He is to blame because you can tell when a woman loves for real and when anything changes in that regard. If not that way, there must have been something that always didn’t feel right though it may be very mild. A camouflaged feeling of doubt about her. Or if not, he should have noted why she only accepted to go for a photoshoot with him after he had imported shoes for her. I guess the mjango now wishes that love was not that blind.