(This Post is for Scotchbiscuits, Dennis Matanda, Ishta, Jackfruity, Magintu and my new notebook. You guys brought me back in more ways than you’ll ever know.)

“I’ll try to make the sun shine brighter for you. I will even play the fool, if it makes you smile…After all is said, after all is done, I would do anything for you. Come in here, close your eyes.”
Come With Me, Phil Collins

This is like the beginning, again. Only then it was in different rooms, different years, different us, me nervous. This is like the beginning. But there was no end. Really. For I never stopped thinking of you. Not once. Fiona. Not a day, not an hour, were you never on my mind. I could never forget you. So here we are again. You asking me, seated in my Kitchen hard-backed chair, hands grasping mine in your laps, asking me, and I telling you, again, what I never got to tell you. How it was, how it sometimes still is, now that we are no longer together and you have come back to see me, in my house on the hill, Ntinda, Saturday, afternoon turning into evening. Will it make you happy to know that….

When it rains, these are the hardest times, in the morning, in bed, no electricity on, no kerosene in the unlit lantern, nowhere to go but remain in bed, resolutely on my back, my blanket pulled to my chin, watching the peeling wall, trying to think of the day ahead, trying not to turn onto my side. Because this is when it happens. This is when it all comes rushing back, like you never went away, like I have not been alone all this time, in this bed, in the mornings that have become worse than nights, after I took finishing the airtime on my phone every evening and not buying more until the next day was safely began so I should not be tempted to text you in the night or call you in the morning to say, “Hi,” “Just hi,” and my longing and loneliness come tumbling out soon after with all the promises of how much I miss you and how I now make my bed when I get up in the morning before I leave the room that used to be our bedroom and how I pray, how I never forget to pray, like you always wanted me to learn how to and how I never pray for myself alone anymore. No airtime on my phone because I did not want you to know how much, though it is I who left, how so soon I was missing you, how in fish frying restaurants all over the city watching her, my horror sunk in more and more of the awful mistake I had made, would try to undo unsuccessfully, uselessly remorseful now, you would never listen to me now, now when my trembling lips in stuttering hesitation tumbled out more truths than I had ever spoken all my life with you for you.

So I took to going home with a phone that did not have calling or texting credit though I was alone in my house on the hill most of the time, alone even sometimes when she was over, in my mental rooms on my own even when she wanted me to be with her, thought I was with her, thinking of you much of the time, how only you knew how much I loved to sit in silence in the evening after work, the lights off, my smoking habit given up, listening to the wails of blues men and women 1950s and 1960s Uganda coming to life and how she could never understand that; but no credit on my phone to tell you, that I had since begun the habit again, home for an hour, before I went out to meet her and the ipod on my Samsung was loaded with Eclas Kawalya so he was with me even when I was in angry late evening taxis honking furiously for the traffic to move which I did not hear.

I had stopped loading my phone with credit because I did not want to tell you anymore. Because I did not want you to know about the mornings, before dawn, in bed, gentle drizzling, with you coming back. Coming back. Oh Lord! Coming back. Coming back so, I was terrified of turning on my side to face you not there. Because to turn on my side, Oh God, you were almost there, in bed with me again, the morning sleepy head I was kissing reluctantly to wakefulness. One hand of mine on your curved sleeping hip, my other hand under your neck my palm nestled between your breasts, blowing hot breath into your squirming ear, kissing your warm ticklish neck to hear your indistinct murmuring protests, the giggle like a ripple not far beneath.

To be in bed in the morning, the drizzle coming down outside, no electricity, hours before dawn, awake, with you, the day belonged to you, my day belonged to you. And I, lying in bed alone knew this. For months I knew this. Even when I now believed you would never come back, I still knew this, a musing man in bed alone in the morning with memories more living than all the rest of the yet lived day could ever be, I knew this.

You were more with me when you were gone, more as I tried to forget you. You were with me. But especially in the mornings, hours before dawn, no electricity on, rain drizzling outside, you were with me. You were with me. It’s been months and months, Kim’s coming over, and you are here with me.