A friend (once granted short-term benefits) has made me an offer I chose not to resist. I am indeed very grateful for it. It was a wonderful gesture for our friendship and, believe it or not, an affirmation to my worthiness.

It was also a test of sort, encapsulating a number of questions about my own personal beliefs and values. To be honest, some of the questions existed only because of the “once granted benefits”, which nearly costed us our friendship, alas indirectly. The actual cause was a single episode I term “la koloba”; taken from a Sesotho expression “a le nyaea la koloba”, which means to be lost for words.

Because of this episode, I nearly severed our entire relationship (not just the benefits). However, it wasn’t because I was blameless. I just couldn’t accept the convenience of words momentarily disappearing, given that I had continued to possess them in a situation that clearly called for my protection. In ghetto terms, the situation required for him specifically (as a friend or “benefactor”) to have my back! The details themselves were not at all relevant; it was about “seeing the forest for the trees” situation. Seeing that inaction, in whatever form, amounted to being rejected (not just at a conceptual level, but at the core of my existence).

With the above said, if I were to poetically describe the “la koloba” episode to capture the broad context of what had happened and what happened, I would put it as follows:

He was cowardly and I was feisty.
But this didn’t spell a disaster.
Our backgrounds or timing did.

We perhaps lacked the maturity to see this fact.
Or, we were untrue with ourselves to see the brewing disaster:
Gratifyingly sweet for the body and mind in the shared private moments;
Plainly and crudely bitter for the soul under the watchful eyes of the public.

Musical prelude, it is happening … there is no going back.
We have stepped in the abyss of the movie of our own making.
The cowardly soul yearns to be engulfed in a silky world filled with self.
The feisty soul yearns to be shielded without the silky frills of vanity.

A bruised butterfly in the abyss, seeking the protection of a cocooning soul,
What a truly sweet and bitter disaster!