Status Updates From How to Wake a Butterfly

“I too, like you, avoid certain dates
On the calendar
Love songs are dirges now,
Like Erin’s Lament, aren’t they?
But our bodies ache for other things now,
For other people
I don’t know when this grief will
Finally catch up to me,
But for now, I hear chimes on every tree”

“Don’t blame yourself
Even when the lady sucked
On the confused bone between
Your legs
She came to you”

“There was always so much fire
I didn’t know back then that I was born
a sinner
I didn’t know back then that sometimes
instilling fear is sort of a love language.”

“I ask what “archives” means
He says old things that are kept
To be looked at again
The day Koko Mwasi passed
And I watched him cover his grief
Behind a pair of Ray-Bans
I wondered if this is ever gonna be
An archive
We will look at again.
Dad, stories like ours write themselves
Stories like ours cannot be archived”
😢

“I am loved – if not in the flesh –
In thoughts and prayers”

“My mirror screams “sand”
And I know that nothing will
Ever grow on this body
Flowers die here.”

“I’ve found love,
I’ve found love, damn it!


This is the kind of passion
Nations go to war for…
This is the kind of love
That gets gods crucified”

“The truth is you seem to carry my hurt as well, I think I do. And when there is a need, you lay it down slowly because when boys like me break everyone around needs to have their shoes on. So here I am, ready to give. Ready for everything, you.”

“And I’ve loved you in places
My feet haven’t touched yet.”

“Your smile is a chest
To keep me warm in nights
I have yet to find sleep.”

“This woman…
She says come lie down.

And my skin mumbles a song
In a language I’m just starting to understand
And if you decide to travel far enough
And meet her in her fields of yellows
Tell her
That I now understand why I want to live.”

“We happened because we happened
All songs – even beautiful songs –
Are indeed made up.”

“Maybe blood is too thick
A liquid to grow a garden”

“Thicker walls keep the devils at bay
Thicker walls keep heartbreak at bay.”

“My existence waving red flags
But I’m trying, I swear!
I wake up every morning, trying.”

“Parts of me have started a new dialect
I do not understand
And they speak to each other,
Almost shouting
Like neighbours on lands with no streets
I bat my eyelids to look at the future
And they giggle, they mock,
A secret only they know”

“The old man must have been
Right,
Suffering ends, eventually.”

“I will have to face this beast one way or another.
Let it be today, in my twenties.
There’s so much crying I need to catch up
On.”

“I have seen sadness’s red eyes and have lost
myself many times in their beauty.

.
.
… healing hurts.

“You’re deeply sensitive man.”
I took those words and crushed them”

“But our bodies ache for other things now,
For other people
I don’t know when this grief will
Finally catch up to me,
But for now, I hear chimes on every tree”

“She touched me, I touched her
No need to therapize me
Yes, she was twenty-seven…
No… it wasn’t molestation
I’m clearly fine… denial?”

“Her right thigh reaching as far as
The freezer
Her cleavage, a crucifix”
….

“That same night, under bed sheets
And secrets
Someone stopped growing.”

“Dit au monde entier que je suis entrain de m’éteindre”

“I didn’t know back then that sometimes
instilling fear is sort of a love language.”

“Is that Loic talking in the back?”
“I’m here, Dad”
And he is shocked at the bass in my voice
This is what 15 years does
Unfamiliarity”

“questions
Don’t always guarantee answers
That sometimes, if you’re silent
Enough, the answer will come knocking”

“My father taught me to be a wielder
Of silence, it’s better than flinging
Sounds across the room out of anger”

“This life is getting too loud
This life wants me to answer
And I’ve been nervous about losing
The only thing that makes me my
Father’s son”