Love Yourself, Sis.

Love Yourself, Sis.

By Maggie Gwangwa

Hey sis, let me let you in on something.
You don’t need to open yourself up to every Dick, Tom and Thabiso.
They can smile, buy you drinks, make you feel good.
And for a second, you do feel good,
’Cause baby, you forgot how to love yourself first.
So you bare your soul naked,
Exposing sacred parts only your betrothed should consummate.
You forgot how to love yourself.

You feel your anointing slip each time you let John in.
Sunkissed, cinnamon-sprinkled, sweet like honey –
A thirst trap in the desert.
The gyrating of your bodies in perfect harmony
It’s the euphoric, toe curling crescendo of the passion of youth.

Holy waters you had no business releasing.
Quick release, dopamine hit.
A whisper, a traitor’s kiss.

Poof! he’s gone with the wind.
Nothing but stale memories where love once sojourned.
Still your holy bush burns –
When last did you trim it?

You wear him like knockoff perfume;

A sweetness turned sour, still clinging even after a hundred showers.
You keep logs of uninvited memories.
Trailing behind you like the clattering of just-married cans

But there’s no honeymoon to get to.

If it’s marriage you want, baby you gotta love yourself.
Go back to the scribes, there you might glean wisdom.
This isn’t a 10-step prompt response that chat will spew out in your search for:
“How to become a wife.”
I’m not saying you gotta be perfect,
But baby you gotta clean out your closet.
Turn it into a war room and get on your knees.
This time, with holy utterances and groans – summon your man.
Not with deep throating and moans – not just yet.

In due season, your lily will bloom.
Somewhere between the plush of your pillows and the coves of your ceiling,
You will touch heaven.
You will hear that crescendo of the passion of youth again.
Only this time with the one whom the heavens approve.
Between you and I, my only assignment is to remind you to love yourself, sis.

About Maggie
Maggie is a Lesotho-born, Botswana-based multidisciplinary storyteller, illustrator, and motion designer.  Her day trade is in visual communication and digital design and her love for storytelling started in her early years in childhood.  She is invested in fictional and non-fictional narratives that celebrate African womanhood, inner resilience and wholistic parenting.  Her work, on-screen and off-screen, explore themes of identity, intimacy, Basotho/Batswana heritage, vulnerability and faith.

When her pens is down and designer software are closed, she enjoys casual time with her husband and young son, or journaling in quiet corners.  For Maggie, creativity is a cathartic exercise that relieves the pressure of the unpredictable realities of life.  It is a craft that is to be both admired and esteemed highly.  The mind holds conscious and subconscious ideas to which the artist is but a portal between the realities of the physical and supernatural.  She is entrusted to give meaning and form to the infinity of her ideas, with guide from the muses, and respect for the work which she is but a vessel of.

Her personal ethos: “What is meant to be mine, will find me.”
Current reading list: The Absorbent Mind and The Girl With The Louding Voice