DAVID AGYEI-YEBOAH

Conflicting fragments 

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He would touch me. He would grope. Then fill his palms with my flesh softly, softly till I became a  tide of need, lapping uncontrollably, beating against a shore of warmth. He would insulate me from the fears of this beast of wild desire and time would stand still as his mouth would drip, like a  honeycomb, in need of another to suckle. Hand in my mouth, I’d nibble away, awestruck by how his smooth skin would taste, how deep his melanin would plaster. Then I’d ask, why did I never do the needful, respond to that body exploding with hunger whenever it neared mine all those times earth gathered two souls around a campfire of love?  

But that was what he envisioned of me in the encounter. He’d painted that scene in his mind every night before retiring to bed, twirling it a million times on the vinyl of memory before he made the move. Reality played out in different hues. It was never meant to be.

Jan 18^th, his heart bled, as I admitted to my best friend that our bond could not escape the bounds of friendship. He shoved me aside, tears blinding those almonds. He’d seen the horror in my eyes as  I looked away from his bare chest and could not reciprocate his exhale of hunger. He thought it was enough to entrap me as he had breathed hungrily on others who couldn’t resist his rock-hard torso.  Oh, so many others! I was the wrong target. Korsi and I had been friends since childhood and I  could barely grasp when my affectionate hellos resounded with suggestive come closers, when my sweet smile beckoning him to come join me for lunch after a game of soccer morphed into, Come join me for a night of ravaging sex. 

I had never fathomed that my best friend wanted more. His gaze called out for more, wanting of every trinket in my store of flesh. Yet deeper, he wanted to yarn my soul and spirit to create the ultimate threaded figurine. It crushed me in an instant that I could not reciprocate this wild desire for I loved Korsi so, but only as a friend. A best friend. It was never meant to be. And then it awakened me to the fact that there are so many individuals seeking the melting pot of a love they will never eat of. In a polar society, this is minimal but for my friend this is ritual. This is Africa. The land where man lovers are sacrificed to Gods created in the minds of individuals and she-he’s are burnt at the stake of bigotry. I was raised to frown on the love of a man for another of his kind. I  could never understand the dynamic. But I always knew the world lacked empathy and that those that were loudest to curse would probably prostitute for men if they had a similar feeling, that those that screamed blasphemy would never know what it felt like to be trapped. 

Korsi felt trapped, he felt he could not love, he felt he had to starve, sealing completely his volcano of desire. I had girl troubles that felt a tad crippling, sometimes. But not like Korsi. Because Korsi was trapped in that vicious cycle of self and societal hate that religious birds could never heal. I sing a song of emancipation for Korsi. The fathers of the land don’t understand him. The ancestors seemed to have turned their back on modern complexity forgetting the wounds of man lovers have cried out from the beginning. From the tides of Oshun to the open heavens of Toturobonsu.

Korsi deserves love, someone to navigate this dark world with, just like any other human on planet earth. I could never complement Korsi but I wailed to God that day. That someday, somehow, his wounds would heal.

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