writing – Page 2 – Lele Muthali

Isn’t It Pretty?

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

Reckoning

30.7.25

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What does it mean
to obey a God who calls for ruin?

What kind of justice
leaves no room for mercy?

What kind of love
levels walls and wombs alike?

Who is this Judge
so patient, so perfect,
so exacting?
Who balances the scale
with both blessing and blood?

Do I trust a God
who sees beyond sides?
Who destroys to rebuild?
Who acts not for our comfort,
but for His order?

Joshua 5:13-14

¹³Now when Joshua was near Jericho, he looked up and saw a man standing in front of him with a drawn sword in his hand. Joshua went up to him and asked, “Are you for us or for our enemies?”

¹⁴“Neither,” he replied, “but as commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.”

-Lele

Walls Fall Like Rain

30.7.25

I built Jericho.
A proud city at the edge of a promise –
the last thing between exile and exhale.

I built because I learned that love can vanish mid-embrace.

That tenderness is weakness,

And that the Sacred draws

Both seekers and destroyers.

I built walls of flesh and pulses.

I built walls of mercenary silence.

I lit torches along the parapets.

I filled the moat with past versions of myself.

I did not know then

That Jericho must fall, as the Sun must rise.

And when Time comes, even silence shakes the ground.

And Jericho falls.

The echo of her collapse is a Psalm.

I walk now through the ruins
of an erstwhile prison and protection.

Praying for the wisdom of a prostitute,
who surrendered the fortress when the promise was near

And let the walls fall like the rain falls.

-Lele

Why Would a Warrior Display His Swords?

20.7.25

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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

Witch

18.7.25

The alchemist

who flies on the wings of Grace,
She moves in the stillness between stars—
26 full moons as a vow on her wrist.

Her scent is surrender,
Her rhythm is temperance,
wrapped in Sun, silk, and strategy.

You need not understand.
You need only yield.

-Lele

Duty

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

To the Cook

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

Any Woman

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

My Sheperd

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

Daddy’s Girl

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