I finally realized why I loved mornings. What could beat waking up to see her peacefully sleeping on my side? Not even that beautiful sunrise would. If anything, it just made the scene much brighter. As always, I would wake her up with some nice compliments. Gas her up a little bit and she would start blushing. That smile. It always took me to a happy place. Eventually she would hit me with a pillow because I’m now too much and then turn to face the other side. My mornings always started on a high note. We were like two teenagers who had just fallen in love. We could not let go of each other. You would think we were obsessed. But we were. This morning was different though. I’m not sure whether it was because of the problems we had been having the past week. Despite these problems, we had been coping well. We had our usual romantic mornings. Today things felt different. I remember we were just sitting in the dining table having breakfast before we both left for work. I turned to compliment how gorgeous she was looking and she would not even look at me. There she was, playing with her pendant. Looking around nervously as if there was something she was hiding. Her breakfast was barely touched. I wanted to place my hand on her cheek but she hesitated a bit when I attempted. I then stopped. I could feel some weird tension.

“What’s the matter Emily? You can always talk to me about anything.”

She was just silent. Her eyes really avoided mine. I felt confused. I really wanted to know what was running through her mind. Could it be that this time, everything hit her a bit harder than the last time we fought about what we wanted? We seemed to have two different paths. I wanted to continue practising in the city but she always dreamed of going to this baking school outside the country. We would talk about this but never meet in the middle. This week everything intensified because I brought up the issue of her meeting my parents.

“I... I’m not sure w...we can do this anymore.” She said with her eyes focused on her hands playing with her pendant.

For a moment I wanted to think I was dreaming. I felt a part of me leave my body. I was weak. Suddenly I didn’t want to eat anymore. Those words made me full. All that was ringing in my head was our amazing moments. The beautiful mornings. Her words.

Was this the last time for us?

Inspired by The Last Time by The Script.

There is something beautiful about intertwined hands. It shows togetherness; love. An emotion we all want to feel at one point in our life. The problem comes when one hand holds the other too tight. It leaves the other hand suffocating, which is not healthy. At one point, one will have to let go of the other hand because it hurts holding theirs.

That was how it felt with Chungu. He was those dreamy guys. At some point it felt as though he was starring in my movie, with him as my main character. He had the looks. He also had the personality. By personality, I mean he played the boyfriend role perfectly well. My friends would envy our relationship all because of how well everything seemed and how he treated me. For a moment I felt like Cinderella and he was that prince who was left with my glass slipper.

What people didn’t know was that behind closed doors, I was the Cinderella who was being mistreated. It was always his words which were thorns to me. They would poke me and injure me. Then he would cover it up with gifts and fancy dates. He was too insecure that it would lead to us quarreling over Taji who took me for lunch as we discussed work related stuff. We would fight (verbally) to the extent of slamming doors and not talk to each other for a week or so.

Chungu’s hand squeezed mine too hard. Some nights it was unbearable that I would cry myself to sleep. When he would notice this, he would make the first move and start being nice. In his mind, leaving lovey dovey notes on the kitchen counter would always do the apology.

Unfortunately, the notes stopped working after some months. These notes would feel like countdowns for leaving. Until one night we had an argument because of laughing with Tamu for too long. I remember it got too heated and I shouted that I was done. I dashed to the room and picked the few things that I could get hold off with tears in my eyes. I left him standing in the corridor in awe and slammed the door hard just to let him know I was really done.

It was time I started a new life. The healing would come later.

First, I needed to breathe.

Inspiration: Better in Time by Leona Lewis