The Letter “L”

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If I could meet the person who made Love, I would ask them why it had to start with letter “L”

The letter ‘L’ originates from a Proto-Sinaitic sign (c. 1500 BC) representing an ox goad or shepherd’s crook, likely derived from earlier Egyptian hieroglyphs. It evolved through the Phoenician lamedh into the Greek lambda and eventually the Roman L, transforming from an angled shape to the modern vertical-horizontal structure.

I know you didn’t understand the history of the letter and never thought that it even existed. It feels like the letters and the alphabet have always been with us. We have knowledge of evolution and yet that of letters never comes to mind. Yes, you are not to blame, the fact is, it doesn’t matter to most of us, but how about a different perspective? How about a narrative that actually matters?

The English coined some of the most painful, pertinent words starting with the letter L; Life, Love, Loss, Lust, name them and yet we are blind to the warnings like moth attracted to the flame just to get burnt. We are stupid flies that follow the corpses to the grave especially when it comes to Love. What choices have we anyway?

Woody Allen in Love and Death clearly stated that, “To love is to suffer. To avoid suffering one must not love. But then one suffers from not loving. Therefore, to love is to suffer; not to love is to suffer; to suffer is to suffer. To be happy is to love. To be happy, then, is to suffer, but suffering makes one unhappy. Therefore, to be unhappy, one must love or love to suffer or suffer from too much happiness.” Yet I still chose to love you.

Sometimes, I wonder how it could have gone. Maybe I would have moved to you, rose in one hand and confidence in my soul. Under the witness of a billion stars in the sky, I would have gone down on one knee and asked, but sorry I didn’t have the confidence, I still don’t.

On other days, I think maybe a text with lines partly generated by AI or stolen from my favorite poems, I would have crafted a poem that spoke of your mellifluous voice, voluptuous body, lustrous eyes that stole my ability to concentrate, your seraphic smile or your celestial being, but I didn’t. How could I, when you ruined my ability to use my brain?

Love doesn’t ask why, and so on that cold January day it should have known better than to bring two contrasting people together. January is known to be a dry month, the Baganda decided to ridicule it by calling it ‘Gatonya’ which can literally be translated to ‘it leaks,’ and whatever they referred to most definitely wasn’t rain. Maybe they meant hearts or tears or whatever leaks. I don’t remember the hazy details, I was absorbed into what I don’t remember because in your presence nothing else was worth remembering. I still recall the song that played on the radio in that rusty taxi after the conductor said to us “Mwenyigeko” – squeeze yourselves a little bit, because he wanted to make more money. I was angry at first but sometimes adversity brings luck, that moment is when you pushed close to me and asked, “Am I squeezing you?” I smiled like a sheep following a shepherd unbeknownst it was heading to the abattoir. With a voice that was supported by splints I struggled to say “No, I am fine.”  The silence that followed as we stared into each other’s eyes is the deepest conversation I have held all my life.

In that split moment of silence, you travelled a million times on my mind, you – faster than Clerk Kent in Smallville or Spider man in the multiverse were in every part of my body at once. You broke my knees, you opened my sweat pores, I am not sure which type of cardiologist you were, but you sure checked out my heart and found that it was vacant, so you planted your presence. In that shared silence, your bright smile snapped me out of oblivion, and the words that followed will forever be a preserve of audacity – “Is it because I am hot?”  you asked in the most mellifluous voice I had ever heard.

“Huh, Huh hmmm, are you?” I managed to ask, then felt stupid for asking a stupid question but I had already placed my dignity at the altar to be sacrificed.

“I know and you know it too, otherwise you wouldn’t be sweating on a cold day” then you smiled again like it was the most natural thing to do. You were in control and you knew it, so you decided to exercise your power on a mundane being.

‘I.., hate taxis, they make me sweat” I lied and you didn’t probe further.  Then the song played from those dust-filled speakers with wires covered in dark seal tape, that song that haunts me to date. Sometimes I get nightmares and I am watching you sing that song, I wonder why it had to be that song and worse so from a person who had died miserably and in pain.

“Enyimba zo mukwano zinyizza….” you fumbled with some of the lyrics that I completed in my heart “Zi wana wana nyo abagalana, nebwenziba amattu era zinoonyaa…”  and like a choir on cue, you picked up at “Simanyi oba leero nakeesa…” I admired your innocence and confidence to sing unbothered in a taxi full of people from all walks of life like the lady behind us who had a black polythene full of silver fish that conquered all the fresh air in the taxi, or the old man who seemed like he had witnessed the world wars and the economic depression, or the lady who breast fed a crying baby that wouldn’t stop or the slay queen who had long multi-coloured nail extensions and kept playing loud tik-tok videos while laughing or me who was in awe for being next to an ethereal being.

The conductor’s request for money startled us out of the shared love awn that our feelings had built.  It was easier to ask for your number because we were not heading to the same destination. The shared likeness for a song that I now hate bound our fate. You were even more attractive when you said your name was “Elizabeth like the Queen of England.” You were the queen of my heart. The Okileng empire would be all yours for eternity, so to sound creative, I said I would call you “El” like the spelling of letter “L.”

I don’t believe in coincidences or star signs or whatever science decides to explain in place of divinity, but I should have known that I had chosen a wrong name, related to a letter that resembles so many other terrible things like “loss, lackadaisical, lamentable, lax, left or late.”

Sometimes, I wonder how we could have turned out, may be by now we could have already had some arguments about which movie is better than the other or if Passenger is better than Ed Sheeran, I know we could have agreed that Bien worked overtime on that “Chikwere” song but above all I am certain, we would still be together because ours was to be a story of love.

Some days, I wonder who would have loved our kids more than the other or who would have turned out wiser, but I don’t mind if it had been you. I wouldn’t mind third wheeling in my own family.

Dear El,

I wonder if you can hear me or read this letter just like the other 1000 or more that I have written before. To be honest, I lost faith in all that could have been and what I feel but I know that none of this was fair to any of us. 

Yours on earth

T.OKILENG 

I trash the letter just like all the ones before it. It is nonsensical to keep writing to someone who can’t reply but that is a feeling I want to hold onto, to know that I never stopped thinking about you, that I never betrayed you or atleast never groomed what never was but could have been.  The cold response I received that day when I got home and called to find out where that old taxi had dropped you is the most painful sound I have had for the last 4 years.

“Hello” I said with all the rehearsed confidence.

“Hello,” a male voice echoed on the other side of the phone.

“Is Elizabeth around, I would like to speak to her.” I should have stopped there but I wanted to hear more and then he said it, like he ate metal and his voice sordid, deadpan, stony and all the synonyms of someone who had no compassion in his heart.

“She’s gone. It was an accident”

Written by

T.OKILENG

Timothy Okileng Okwi alias T.OKILENG is the Author of a deeply captivating play titled The Horse wife and a poetry collection titled Love & Her diseases ft Joy Awad. Contrary to what I have so far published, I enjoy reading African based short stories. I am on the path of putting together a publishing company, Timeless Ink publishers because i believe there are many stories out there that must be heard.

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