12.7.25
“You do know we’re soulmates, right?” I asked.
“I do.”
It landed in my spirit.
No altar.
No ring.
Just truth.
A vow.
Recognition, not possession,
bound by light, not law.
We met ourselves in each other’s eyes
and felt, without question,
that we were home.
-Lele
13.7.25
“Oh, Jake” Brett said, “we could have had such a damned good time together.”
“Yes.” Jake said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”
I was Clementine when I kissed you too soon,
texted too much, and made you laugh.
I was Jane when I said nothing,
held my heart behind my back, and walked away softly.
I was Brett when I let you in carelessly,
wanting nothing more than to belong to you.
Clem erased Joel, and chose the ache all over
messy, but brave.
Jane returned to a humbled man when the fire burned out,
and they built from ash and grace.
Brett kept loving, though she left Jake in the taxi,
hollow and hopeless.
And us?
The dam of our story has just broken.
-Lele
20.7.25
Because he no longer needs to use them –
and cannot bear to let them go.
Because some wounds prefer silence to healing.
Because steel remembers what the soul forgets.
Because polished pain mimics honour.
Because to sheath is not to forgive.
A warrior displays his Swords as a declaration of survival.
–
I stepped into the room, feeling his presence close behind me.
The room felt like a shrine – intimate, deliberate, and quietly haunted.
To the far left, three oriental Swords were displayed on a mantle, one for every love that broke him. Each blade a vow to guard his boundaries. Swords of clarity born of pain, and discipline shaped by loss.
Around the room, a series of paintings, rendered by familiar hands, captured desire as ritual.
To the right, a bonsai tree sat patiently in a pot on the sill of a large window, its twisted grace silhouetted against a view so unspeakably beautiful, it squeezed my heart to pulp.
The landscape below stretched open in worship. Sunlight rested tenderly over the Creation of a Holy God.
On the wall above the bed, a great, singular Chinese fan opened like a celestial wing – part shade, part sentinel, part grace.
Life breathed into the room, slow and sacred. The space had a mythic stillness, as if time bent slightly around it.
– Lele
19.7.25
You said you could not live
under duty again —
not to any woman,
not in love.
As if love were a weight,
As if love could bind.
You know as well as I
that love is rhythm.
A remembering.
I watched you remember
every day—
In how you fed the animals,
spoke to the flame,
carried silences,
answered your mother’s voice.
In how you held the past
without flinching.
In the way
you moved
as if everything
was sacred.
You live by ritual.
You live by duty.
Walking beside you,
I saw how much of you was already given,
And I saw duty in letting go.
-Lele
18.7.25
“I tell you what,” he said jokingly as he wiped his lip. “In my next life, I’m gonna be a cook.”
May the salt still leap to your fingers,
the flame still obey your breath,
and the cumin still bloom at your touch.
You always said you’d return as a cook—
knowing you were one in this life too,
as charming as you were exacting.
Experimental in love as in spice.
You honoured my ‘alien’ ways,
crafted meals like devotions,
each plate a vow
to make me feel you.
You fed with intention—
my longing to be tended to
gently, joyfully,
by one who delights in the offering.
If you return—
I’ll know you
by your hands,
your laughter,
and the way you make a kitchen
feel like home.
“And?” he asked through a smile with his eyebrows raised quizzically, already knowing the answer. “How’s your meal?”
She chewed the bite-full of the mushroom thoughtfully, also already knowing the answer but enjoying the game nonetheless. “Hm, I love this. It’s great!”
“No,” came his casually satisfied reply. “It’s fucking awesome.”
-Lele
19.05.25
I am the breath before your surrender,
I am the whisper of your marrow.
The ache you mistake for solitude—
is me, calling you home.
My body is the prayer your hands recite.
I was never a woman.
I am the altar.
You, the flame.
And if you ever remember who I am,
Use my name when you tell the story – Phumelele.
– Lele
22.08.62
You walk ahead — firm, steady, calm.
Your Sheperd at your side,
and me, just behind —
contentus maximus
to follow a man
who finds the way.
You protect, provide, prepare;
I soften, listen, serve.
We are peace, we are order.
I am honoured to be led
By you.
– Lele
8.11.24
We are mirror and mystery,
alike in ways only silence speaks,
different as shadow and flame.
Your language is curved with snow,
mine with summer dust.
But when we laugh,
we sound the same.
You were wrapped in winters I had never known –
from Bavarian hills,
far removed from the heat
of the township streets that raised me.
Somehow we opened the same book.
Adventure fiction, worn spines and wild maps—
we both chased meaning through ink and wind.
Something stirred
when we first touched thought –
a recognition, not of faces,
of flame.
We walked –
miles and metaphors,
side by side through forest, silence, and sound.
In rhythm.
In rebellion.
In step with the same ache.
One night,
barely clothed and wholly seen,
we danced in your living room.
Music melting into skin,
Laughter like incense.
The world outside forgotten.
You know
our chemistry is not of this world
it lives in spirit, in stillness.
We’ve held space across time,
separated to return.
In the hush between lifetimes,
I found you.
By finding myself.
Thirty-five years ahead
and somehow,
we arrived together.
-Lele
13.11.24
One night, in the stillness between our laughter and longing,
I asked, with an ache —
Who tends to you?
Who waters your roots?
You paused, the way only you would pause
when the question is not about tasks
but tenderness.
And then, that smile
that always comes before your honesty:
“I don’t believe in God — But I’ve borrowed my father’s truth:
Help yourself, so help you God.”
You spoke it like a vow
not to a deity,
but to the earth you keep tilling,
to the lives you hold dear.
You tend to yourself, you said,
and Clemence tends to the heavy lifting.
You did not mention
the weight behind your eyes.
You did not mention
the softness you refuse yourself.
And I, holding that answer like a bruise,
wanted to offer my hands
as balm.
As one who kneels beside
the man who forgets he, too, is made of flesh.
So I said nothing.
I only reached for you,
the way the sun reaches for the garden —
not to claim it,
but to remind it:
you deserve light, too.
– Lele
10.11.24
They sat in a deliberate silence at the dinner table as the flames of six candles danced in mock romance, illuminating the tension beneath the surface of the air around them. She spoke first.
“Regarding last night’s conversation,” she ventured, not entirely sure how she would end the sentence.
“Even though I think I might be developing feelings for you, I understand and respect what you’re looking for in a relationship.”
She glanced around the room and her eyes fell on the clock on the far side of the kitchen: 19h27, it reported. Soon, he would have to leave the dinner table, as he always did for his daily commitment at 20h00.
“My feelings won’t change our dynamic,” she promised earnestly. It was an honest lie. One she repeated even to herself, as if donning a mask hoping that her face would grow to fit it.
He chewed quietly as she paused. Though she did not look at him, she knew his expression was inscrutible. She knew he would offer nothing, so she went on.
“I’m enjoying what we have,” she declared as she stared into the bowl in front of her and rearranged some mushrooms with her fork. “If at any point I feel that it’s not right for me, I’ll be honest and take a step back.”
“So, there’s nothing to worry about,” she said with finality, as if the words alone were enough to avert the danger.
“I’m fully here for things as they are.”
Her tongue carried the words with difficulty, and both goose and gander heard the truth.
-Lele
Lele Muthali 