Nostalgia: Love is a State of Being

While coming from work this evening, I saw two lovebirds holding hands and swinging it gently as they walked. The girl, her hair was a braid and its tip gently dropped on her left shoulder each time she rested her head on the boy’s shoulder. And her ebony skin glowed as they passed under the Cocoa Dome’s security light. I didn’t see her face, but with the radiance of her skin, she must have been an epitome of African beauty (I wish I was not wrong).

The girl held on her right hand a plastic of chips, while the boy on the other hand was with a cup of ice cream, vanilla to be precised. Intermittently, the two would play love and allowed one to take from the other’s chips, or lick from the other’s vanilla. I chuckled lowly as this went on until it reminded me of the evening of 21st March, 2013…

… it reminded me of the sweetness of her voice, the freshness of her breath, the radiance of her skin, and her simple elegant walking style that drew me closer to the paradise of her love. It reminded me of everything about her, about us, about the short time we nursed the love, until the sharp pain of the heartbreak cut across my heart again.

Then, I stopped short, behind the lovebirds, and watched them as they walked away, into the bliss of the emerging night, telling myself, “love is a state of my being”.

I retrieved my phone from my pocket, it was really the best time to listen to music, and I quickly opened BoomPlay music app and put “Reason by Khalid” on. I wanted to sing along, but I couldn’t. The song didn’t really depict the state that I found myself, it wasn’t thrusting me into subconsciousness as I wanted it to, and so I switched to another of his song, “Young, Dumb, & Broke” — one relating to many of the mixed emotion that’s propping in me.

The time between 2013 and 2020 had been undescribable, I had found myself most times as a beloved rather than a lover, and thus hurting a few caring hearts. Most times, I felt heartbroken that I couldn’t reciprocate the love, but in most of those times, I couldn’t bring myself to loving people out of pity.

The lovebirds earlier on, as they reminded me of 2013 with its beautiful thorns, so also they reminded me of January 2020. They reminded me of the calmness her voice embedded in my heart, and her sleek beauty that stared at me in the mental files inside my head..

They reminded me of how she had, wittingly, told me what I didn’t want to hear and still made me long for her. Everyone has a story of love to tell to his/her lover, but I just felt the pieces of my story haven’t fallen in place yet, or perhaps, this is it I am telling to her before she comes through.

“Love is a state of my being,” I reiterated, telling myself in a dialogue with the night that I would hold unto her love, like I held unto that of 2013’s before it faded away and hope that soon, before the heart grows old, the wait would not be in vain, and the heart would not go on another exile of love.

The journey home was still long, and as Medium became a medium to tell this story, I adjusted my backpack and put Khalid’s Winter on repeat…