Onkọ̀wé Issue 01 · ịhụnanyaContents
Cover art for Both Love and Death
Issue 01 · ịhụnanya · Poetry

Both Love and Death

by Inkomarume

And when love finds me, I pray it takes me forever.

Both love and death Come to you when their time comes. And when they come, they do not care whether you're ready or not.

They simply take you away.

Both love and death, kills you when they have found you. And to force love is the same thing as committing suicide in a romantic way.

And when love finds me, I pray it takes me forever. For I once had a taste of it through free trials, and I found myself clapping for what was happening to me, Until it left me in the middle of a journey it had taken me on without ever telling me where it was leading.

And when death finds me, I hope it lays me down gently. For I have always remembered it and lived each moment of my life as fully as I could. I have tried to do everything I could. I have tried to be anything I could. And I am still doing everything I can. And I am still becoming anything I can—not to win the world, but simply to experience life in all its possible forms.

Finally, when I get back home, I will share the story of life on this tiny blue and green rock in only two divine languages: Love and death

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About the writer

Inkomarume

I am a poet and writer from Kigali, Rwanda, who explores the inner world of human beings: their wounds, desires, contradictions, memories and dreams. I write to give language to feelings that are often difficult to speak, and to turn personal experience into something others can recognise themselves in. My writing moves between intimacy, spirituality, love, identity and the mysteries of being human. I believe literature can be more than expression; it can be a way of healing, remembering and awakening. I write because there are things within us that need to be spoken, and sometimes poetry is the language they choose.