Prose | Leaving this city
Words by Keneuoe Setai and image by Niamh Walsh-Vorster.
Why did I not leave this place? Why did I stay in this city? I scowl at myself because I know why, but I evade the answer, seeking rationale in my absurd behaviour. I’m trying to find the sanity in haunting myself with the possibility of seeing you again. The thought pollutes my mind. How will I act when I see you again? Will I lean in casually to give you a not too familiar hug? Or will I abandon composure, fall to my knees, wrap my arms around your ankles and ask you why in the world you promised me you’d never let me feel this empty? Will I scream at you for taking away everything and beg you to please come home, come back to me? I left everything exactly the way it was when we were happy. Will I smile politely and ask how you have been? Or will I let the fountains that I have been holding prisoner behind my eyes escape, and break down in hysterics? Will I respond that I have been fine when you politely ask how things have been going for me? Or will I let you see my misery?
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I fog my mind with thoughts of how I will feel when I see you again. Will I remember the last smile you gave me before it all collapsed? Or will I remember that giving up was the only option we gave ourselves when things seemed to get a little too tough? Will I see a lesson or a person I once irrevocably loved? Or will I see a story incomplete, a poem that was cut in half, a tree that died and could never grow new leaves? Will I feel the urge to ask you who you are loving now? Is she anything like me? She cannot be better than me. She must be nothing like me, or else your claims to love her would be false. And if you say you do love her, how does it feel to be loving her while you never stopped loving me?
For your sanity and mine, I need to leave this city.
Keneuoe Setai is a writer and poet living in the south of Johannesburg.
