For Sugs

I had the perfect opening paragraph for this piece. I remember telling you on the phone fifty minutes ago. You hurried me off asking me to write it down before I forgot. I didn’t.

I think this is a reflection of what I hope is a friendship between us. We talk for one or two hours months apart and there is absolutely no judgement, no expectations, we just flow , unload gossip recklessly and discuss adulting without filters.

I feel inadequate writing this. I have just gone through your timeline. There’s a thread of you writing messages for mutuals and I am reminded of how you are a master of words. Even on twitter, you turn random paragraphs into pure poetry, reminding someone that you are there for them or promising another, a visit to a bar. I fear that this portrait of you will not hold upon examination. You will find the words too light to hold the complexity of your person. The expressions not built to carry your ability to balance laughter, love and pain.

It’s funny because words were our meeting point. I had just finished reading your piece in Lolwe and by God I was finished. The depth, the fucking mastery and the raw emotion had me. I picked up the phone with just one question, how?

I remember making notes from the conversation about giving your writing time to breathe and take a life of its own. But what stayed with me was the ease, the casualness of the conversation.

I hope one day we will meet up in a bar with loud music. We will scream above it, joke about running to other countries, noisy neighbours and new lives to escape to.

Till then, Happy Birthday you work of miraculous transformation.

Bonne Chance

P.S I haven’t forgotten that you refused to send me pictures that were supposed to inspire this piece. I guess sometimes words are adequate or maybe we bend them into impossible shapes when they are all we have.