I hope this letter finds you in a better position than your ancestor was in 100 years ago. I write this to you out of concern. A concern that emanates from the same place where my love for you is stored. My soul.
Thandi, I'm concerned that you don't know how much I love you. I love you for so many reasons. I love you 1st for being my sister. You cry in the same timezone. You bleed only a few hundred kilometers from me. You sweat under the same sun, as you toil the same rich earth. I love you because it feels right. It feels like a completed itinerary when I consciously care what you encountered at 15:43 on June 15, 2013. I love you because you love too. You may not love me, but we both love Frederick.
I love you Frederick because you have a problem, and in that problem is a huge dusty patch of common ground for you and I. We will probably never meet, but the cosmos will ensure that when you overcome that tribulation, I will be blessed with the strength to achieve the same triumph. I love you because you live here with your mind heart and soul. You will die. Here. Your soul will hover above as the flesh of your body fertilizes the common ground we shared, so that when Bradley and Mashudu move in to share the problems you and I have overcome, their common ground is no longer dusty, but green and lush. Because we love Mashudu.
Mashudu, you're my favourite. I love your pain, because it prepares you and I for therapeutic healing. I love how the gaping cut that draws salty tears from us today, is a scar that Trevor Noah will look up to tomorrow, for it will be a catalyst for sweet-tears of roaring laughter the day after. I love your cornrows. I love your afro-comb. I love the colour of your soul which, unlike the colour of your skin, will not be changed by the unforgiving rays of the African sun. I love you most, because my father loved you with his blood.
Baba, I don't know you enough, but that's more than enough for me to be permanently infatuated by you. You died poor, so I could live rich. You worked the Earth so that I could employ it. You faced villains so I could see heroes. You ran on burning earth, so I could bathe in cooling waters. You had your naked body covered in dust, so I could shine in metals that would never rust. You endured pepper spray, so I could taste peppered steak. You don't know how much you've done for me, because you never made plans to do it. It just felt right. It felt right running towards a bullet that was whizzing towards you because, in that moment of certain painful death, your only worry was whether or not you could use your body as a shield to prevent the same bullet from harming Luthando's dad.
So, Luthando; I hope you find what my father left for you, because I enjoy what your mother gave to me. I hope you wake up one day in a South Africa that's so preoccupied with looking up to admire die blou van ons se hemel, that we have very little time to look down upon the colour of our toes. I hope you wake up to a democracy that's protected by the same people it strives to protect. I hope you extract pride from your culture, and swagger from your surroundings. I hope you find that "you" is not pigment, but mindset. That "you" is not height, but right. That "you" is not wealth, but health. That "you" is not "I", but "us". And I love us . . . because I love you.
So dear you, I love the ink-stain on your thumb. Your only ex that I care about is the X you left on that ballot paper. I love the frown you have in your green bar-coded ID book, because when you look at it you smile knowing that even though it represented captivity, poverty, and oppression to our grandfathers, it represents opportunity, prosperity, and freedom to us. And I really love us.
So, dear us; let's die together.
izzy806
ellievsbear
