Saffron and rosemary; you dont ask him her name.

The hurt washes over you like being caught in the rain and it becomes harder to distinguish between shelter and natural disaster when the hurricane thunder claps the word "home" in a language you haven't heard since you were 14. It's like an apology drenched in guilt, and how the blood it sits in isn't yours but how the pain that stains it bears the same shape as his demons. It's how you wish you could've predicted the storm before it broke down each wall but how you've always known that the foundation of this home was made of wax paper: thin. And the way that words will never be enough and how the history books are proof of this and how his account will never match mine but how we can both agree that you broke my heart.

She asked if I ever think of you, but I tell her no - I think of: 1.  How commitment felt like a mystery, so you soaked yourself in honey to sweeten the taste and how my lips were always too sticky to protest, how both they, you and I could never quite part. 2. How I always describe you in iridescent tones, Even the blistered knuckles and bruises I reimagine into battle scars and artistry. 3. How 'I love you' always sounded strained, like the whimpering of a dog, how I was always finding splinters in odd places and how our friends always asked about the puppy sized shed.

I dream in fragments - our moments I fold into miniature paper cranes   and swallow whole: His voice like thunder in mid-July  hums the song of forgiveness you’ve spent your whole life trying to learn the words to, handing out music sheets like tattered apology cards to everyone but yourself. My reflection stares back at me in disbelief and so I roll out my tongue to prove to her that I can swallow a secret. His lips press against yours and suddenly, God created light.

Your hands work like clockwork on my body, In your eyes the golden specks sit like notches on a bed post: I count each 1… 2.. 5… whilst you press your lips against each notch on my arm …6 …8 …9 We know love sounds confessional, so you tell me about the dream where you peel back the corners of the earth and fold it into tiny squares over and over and over again So that the space between our fingertips, our skin, our eyes and lips become folklore So that the sun becomes so enraged it refuses to burn But we pretend that we’re okay without the light …10 … that we’ll invent time again …11 … that love is sacrificial …12.

In the morning you blow warm air on my lids to wake me soft, soft, gentle - we call this the eye of the hurricane. Natural disasters we name after the freckled constellations on the bridge of your nose; 08:05am: the pout of my lips meet Orion. I become acquainted with Aquila when the pink of your mouth travels south down the river of my throat - we call this the laws of nature. You call me your teeny, tiny hurricane girl - full of disaster, full of poetry.

From my mother I inherit two big brown eyes that perform witchcraft - the kind made of jasmine, innocence, lavender and two cups of ice, the kind that express emotion in the same way love scenes flicker in old movies: She whispered “the angels gossip about our eyes; the day you delivered cruel intentions and innocence in a single gaze, your father in return delivered to me a look of frightened familiarity.” From my mother I have stories about the moon, and the stars - the kind that serve as a reminder that some magic tricks we inherit. Some stories perform their own magic, Pale white ribbons that wrap around crumbling boxes , the kind we made a pinky pact to keep locked tight, the kind that hold the stories I try to forget. My favourite magic trick: The one where I forget that I am performing.

This is the part where you decide that you know. You decide that you’ve heard enough apologies. You chewed up the truth like a well-done steak, Or at least the version that hurts the least, The version that you find is easiest to swallow But the lake in front of us looks muddy to me and you’re pretending that the fish scattering through the dark clouds are happy where they are And I’m pretending that what you know is enough - that you’re bloated with closure and full with T-bone steak And we’re both pretending that I didn’t break your heart And we're both pretending that I didn’t steal your first love Just to fill the vacant spot in my trophy cabinet But the fish are still fish and the lake is still the lake And we’ve both hurt enough since then trying to forget And I turn to you and confirm "they’re happy. the fish are happy” and chew.

We both know that I know your entire story - Each capitalisation and parenthesis, How your child-hood began as a full-stop Until doors were broken and the same system that failed you emerged wearing a cape, and the full-stop grew a tail like the kitten we adopted, the one we co-parented in parentheses and commas that threatened to become full-stops. I know your least favourite chapter: The one where your father drowns himself in alcohol, And your mother’s story plays a supporting role - her name a sub-heading scribbled in italics because you can’t quite bring yourself to reference your father for her paragraphs - he only ever remembers in italics, and you can’t quite bring yourself to capitalise her name because that makes it all the more real, You can’t risk your story becoming a biography. So instead you play pretend and we find this book in the Fiction section of Young Adults.

My family tree consists of roots that curve in all of the right places and branches shaped to bear fruit. I flinch each time the rough of his hand brushes against the soft of my skin, allowing his hurt to collect like the dust on my grandmother’s memorabilia. “binti mzuri” I bite my tongue and translate “the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree” into my mother tongue, allowing ancestral sentences to bulge with a familiar fullness in my mouth. My innocence died in my country’s war - An offering to my ancestors an offering to the women of my family tree.

The first boy I  ever loved sang me words that sounded holy in a language I’d only ever heard my father speak: He confessed in tongue, a distinct rhythm in his cries, and his broken past began to sound a lot like mine. We gambled on our favourite game of ‘Who Loves Who More?’, where the rules demanded adultery just to even the score. I stopped believing in luck. The second taught me the power of prayer: He gripped his fingers around my wrist, repented and recited verses using my lips. My thighs he stained with his soul, and I wore in ‘damnation’ all of his wrongs. His four walls I named ‘Eden’ when he found sanctuary between my thighs and my skin became his alter under moonlight. On the nights when his demons returned his mouth took to me like salvation - Holy water. I stopped attending church.

In his sleep he bites his lip and claws at his own skin, I've become accustomed to war zones and battlefields. At sunrise we both awake to the aftermath of a war. Sometimes, when the blood bath begins to stain, We bleach the sheets, so that pillow-talks no longer Sound like mercy cries, and conceal the smell of gunpowder with black coffee and burnt toast. Sometimes, I take his place in a position of defence. This is love.

In the darkness we draw images of the skeletons we keep hidden - his pale, with sharp teeth and dark eyes wears the same necklace as his mother - hands drawn behind its back with anticipation. In the daylight we exchange kisses, his finger traces the outline of my body as if he is creating a memory, creating room for this past moment, in his future. Two fingers travel along my spine, taking the nearest exist down my shoulder blade, and in this moment where his lips press against my forehead - I learn of how skeletons end up in the closet.