Vumilia & Other Poems
Lydia Kasese
Vumilia (Bear With It)
An ignored “no”,
A tossed aside, “I am too tired tonight”
A careless opening of the legs
A forceful insertion.
Vumilia,
A wife must never refuse her husband,
Fulfilling your husband’s needs is your duty.
Busted lips,
Blue-black eyes,
Missing teeth,
Broken ribs,
A patch of skin
Where there used to be hair.
Vumilia,
Pray for his temper,
Do not provoke him.
Men do not like stubborn women.
Be better.
Another woman’s underwear,
Another woman’s perfume,
Another woman texting you,
Sending you pictures and evidence of their “love”,
Telling you to leave her man alone,
Because you are the evil bitch trapping him in a loveless marriage.
Vumilia.
You know men will always be men,
After all, you are the one he chose,
The one he comes back to.
Pray for his infidelity,
Cover your marriage in the blood of Jesus.
Permission to go out.
Permission to buy toiletries, necessities,
Permission to use the money you bring in,
that goes into his account.
Permission to use the money you bring in,
That he uses to drink himself into a stupor,
That he uses to impress women who are not you.
Vumilia.
Pray for him,
At least he lets you work,
Be grateful.
Also,
Men drink when they are stressed,
Don’t add to his burden.
The church, the women around you,
Your mother, your grandmother,
Your aunts all break the bread that is vumilia and pass the pieces around.
It is the communion we must all take as women.
Or is it?
Homesick
I want my mother.
I want to collapse into her arms
Tell her of this screaming
In my womb
Tell her of this suffocation
In my chest.
This heartache that makes me feel
constantly homesick
For a home that does not exist anymore.
This sorrow that wakes me
In the middle of the night,
That catches in the back of my throat
In front of my peers.
This grief that laces the insides of my eyelids
Threatens to pour itself out at the least convenient of times.
But I cannot.
Because running to you is worse
Than the aloneness of bearing this.
I am scared
You will see the sin I have committed
And will fail to hold space for me
Because your God is greater than me,
Your God is greater than my suffering.
To run home
Would mean to become a sinner.
To acknowledge admit that I have transgressed
So I deserve this
Because the unrighteous deserve agony
for their sins.
The Colour Red
It is the sound
of his heart beating
as he staggers back home
to me
from a night out
with his friends.
It is him shouting
outside my window
and singing out my name
because he promised
that’s how he would wake me up
from my pile of books.
It is me
opening the window
and telling him to keep quiet
because the housemate
is in the middle of making love
to his girlfriend.
It is him nights before
breaking before me
and telling me
how he wishes
he could go out into the world
and just be himself.
It is him telling me about his family
right before I break down
and tell him of how mine is a ticking time bomb
whereas his
is a once exploded
now dormant volcano.
It is him telling me
how filthy my house is
and getting on his knees
to scrub my floors.
It is me standing there
looking helpless
and feeling embarrassed
as my house becomes as clean as it was the day I moved in.
It is me making him dinner
and him telling me I’m a good cook.
It is him disappearing the day before I catch my flight
and appearing just as I’m about to leave.
It is him trying to talk to me
and apologising as I close the door in his face.
It is me driving off
and wishing I had hugged him one last time,
kissed him one last time,
called him “thunder” one last time.
It is him calling me
and telling me he is sorry,
promising to buy me Bukowski,
telling me he loves me.
It is me a month later
knowing I’m not returning
and failing to find the words
to shape into a goodbye.
It is me finally finding the words
and saying “goodbye”.
It is him saying “I know I’ll see you. This isn’t goodbye”.
It is him telling me he will always love me. It is him calling me two days from my birthday,
on my mother’s phone
to say he misses me
and he still loves me.
It is my mother asking me who he is
and me failing to find the words
to tell her who you are
because how does one describe love?
I do not know.
It is you calling me
on my birthday and wishing me a happy birthday.
It is me who reminded you
because I know you forgot.
Just like I forgot yours.
It is me sitting here on my birthday
having had maybe one too many glasses of wine by the beach.
It is me writing this
and building futures with you.
Maybe some people
were really meant to fall in love
and not be together.
I guess this is ok.
Maybe I have already made peace with this.
With loving you from a distance.
With knowing that my heart skips a beat every time you say you love me.
And maybe that is the description of the colour I cannot mention.
Maybe it is actually my heart
pausing to hold on to that moment.
It may also be me
hoping
that you are not saying those words
to anyone else and meaning them.
Hide and Seek
1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10, ready or not, here I come!
I watch the kids outside take turns to be the seeker and the hider.
They scatter about in all directions looking for places to hide.
I’m reminded of my own hide and seek years.
How we looked for places to not be found.
Like the back of your father’s old pick up truck
That smelt of rust and heated up plastic leather
And things that should not come up for air.
Two little girls touching each other
In places they would later come to learn were meant only for men.
The Cliffs
You take me to the cliffs for our second date.
You tell me a couple of weeks ago,
how you stumbled into the sea cliffs
and I want to be there with you the next time you go,
I want to be there sharing the ocean with you,
sharing myself with you.
You are more courageous than me,
more daring, more explorative.
I am always drenched in anxiety.
Always looking for things that can go wrong.
Always waiting for things to burn
and set me on fire when I least expect it.
You are the person gently pushing me to heal,
to survive, to live fearlessly.
The journey to the cliffs I’ll admit,
I can barely remember.
My anxiety was riding shotgun
in a daladala ride I’d convinced you
and myself that I’d be fine with.
I felt safe being with you,
but a woman sat next to me
I and her body kept touching mine
and I wanted to ask you if we could switch seats,
I wanted to re-tell you how I do not like being touched,
I wanted to offer my seat next to you to someone else
so I could stand and have more control
of how other people’s bodies crashed into mine,
but I didn’t.
And so I spent my entire journey there
trying not to feel violated by strangers’ bodies.
My body trusts you.
It is not scared of you,
it does not shrivel up into a seven-year-old girl
or a fourteen-year-old teenager when you reach out to touch her.
She likes being close to you and held by you.
She feels safe next to you.
I remember the cliffs, the journey from the cliffs.
I remember laughing and smiling.
I remember licking the top of my lip
and pointing out how salty my skin had become,
we decided that it was probably because we were sitting close enough
to the ocean for the wind to transfer its salt onto our skin.
I remember you laughing at me licking my arm in three spots to see if it too was salty.
I remember laughing when you took off your glasses
and became in awe of all the colors of the ocean
that your (now tinted) spectacles had deprived you of.
I asked if you could see the little fishing boat in front of us and you said
on a bad day, my eyesight is at 144p
and I laughed at that reference.
I remember you kissing me.
Not courageously, but softly.
I remember my mind doing the math
of the last time my body had set itself on fire
only to melt in someone’s mouth
and I cannot remember.
I cannot remember feeling desired
without being taken advantage of.
I cannot remember being touched or kissed
without the urgency of having to give my body back in exchange.
I remember the bus ride back home,
mostly because I had relaxed enough
to allow my anxiety to take a back seat.
Mostly because I had a popsicle in my mouth
and you by my side.
Mostly because when we were leaving the cliffs you kissed me
(technically I leaned into you for a kiss)
and you looked into my eyes when we pulled apart
and I felt a longing, a loss, a what does this mean?
I know all of this is temporary now.
I know you will not be here in a few months.
I know it will hurt and maybe I will cry.
I know I will miss you,
I know you will be close by and yet far away.
I do not know if you will ever come back,
but I will hold this, these memories, these feelings,
I will keep writing and writing and writing them
to remember the time and the months we spent together.
Nyachiro Lydia Kasese is a Tanzanian creative writer, poet, documentarian and media director. In 2014, her short story ‘Inside Outside’ was long-listed and published in CACE Africa’s Anthology Fire In The Night (2014). In that same year, her poem ‘Things That Were Lost in Our Vaginas’ was shortlisted by the BN poetry award 2014. In 2015, a short poetry collection The Science of Nail Polish was published by Jalada Africa, 2015. In 2016, Paper Dolls, poetry chapbook was published in May by the African Poetry Book Fund. In 2017, her short story ‘My Mother’s Project’ published in the Caine Prize’s anthology. Her poem ‘Silver Spoons’ was published in 20.35 Africa: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry (2018). In 2019, her short story ‘Home’ was published in the Unbreakable Bonds Anthology. Her poems ‘I Lost My Teeth in a Fight’, ‘C.A.G’, ‘Compass’, ‘Forced Dreams’, and ‘Self-Negotiation’ were published in An Anthology of East African Literature (2023).
*Image by Polina Koroleva on Unsplash
