The Conversation Never Had

Letter 1: From A to Z

Hey Gorgeous

After midnight, Long Street was a river of neon and noise.

Bass climbed the walls of that nightclub like ivy, shaking loose the parts of me I thought were disciplined.

Cigarette smoke curled through blue light; your laugh cut through it cleaner than oxygen.

Don’t pretend you don’t remember the way you looked at me… deliberate, dangerous, almost tender.

Everything about that first kiss felt like trespassing into something sacred.

Fingers at your waist; vodka on your breath; the world narrowing to the small geography between our mouths.

Girls like us weren’t supposed to collide like that, not after the years we spent loving men who mistook containment for care.

He said I was “too much.” You told me yours said you were “hard to hold.”

In that nightclub on Long Street, we were neither too much nor too hard, just hungry.

Just before your lips touched mine, you whispered, “We’re in trouble.”

Kisses have happened to me before, but none that felt like recognition.

Long after the music swallowed us, I knew something irreversible had begun.

Maybe it was the way you unlayered; jacket first, then caution, then history.

Never had I felt a woman look at me the way you did…not curious, but certain.

Our exes would have called it confusion.

Perhaps they would have laughed, called it a phase.

Quietly, I think we both knew it was not a phase but a fracture in the old architecture of who we thought we were.

Remember how you drank after, as if to dilute the clarity?

Suddenly electric became unsteady; epic turned into effort.

The night wobbled; you laughed too loudly; I held your elbow like a secret.

Under the streetlights outside, Cape Town smelled like salt and risk.

Valentine’s Day is here now, and instead of kissing you, I’m writing to you.

We should be unlayering again, not unraveling in ink.

X marks the place where that first kiss split my life into before and after.

You once told me you shrank yourself in love to make men comfortable.

Zero part of me wants to shrink with you.

Letter 2: From Z to A

Hey Cutie

You start at A as if the alphabet can contain what happened. It can’t. But I’ll try to answer you in order, because order is something neither of us had that night.

Zeal is what I feel right now, not confusion (that might be the most dangerous part)

You are 7 steps away from me right now. Same Building. Same sky. Different rooms.

X marks nothing right now except the spot on my rib where Africa curves beneath my skin. The tattoo that you missed that night on Long Street.

While couples press their rehearsed kisses into restaurant corners this coming weekend, I will be tracing that ink and thinking about the way that your mouth found my shoulder but not the continent beneath it.

Valentine’s Day feels like a dare.

Under the streetlights outside our building, I swear the air smells like that nightclub again… salt, sweat, something reckless.

Tonight we should be taking each other apart, not turning pages in evening classes that suddenly feel irrelevant.

Shouldn’t we be laughing about how drunk you were, how the epic prelude deserved a better ending?

Right now the city is selling roses, but I am remembering soft lips and bass climbing up my spine.

Questions are louder than what the music was.

Part of me wants to knock on your door without warning.

Only pride keeps me seated in my chair.

Nothing about that first kiss felt experimental. It felt inevitable.

Men I have loved before kissed me like they were confirming ownership.

Loving him required me to be decorative, not disruptive

Knowing how much you wanted me felt like being seen, not secured.

Jealousy never entered your eyes that night; curiosity did.

In that nightclub on Long Street, I did not shrink.

How rare it is to stand in front of someone and feel expansion instead of evaluation.

Gravity used to pull me inward in relationships; smaller laugh, smaller appetite, smaller life.

For years I practiced disappearing to make men comfortable.

Every time I grew too loud or too certain, they called it “too much.”

Desire, in their language, required containment.

Care felt like conditions and clauses that I never signed but always obeyed.

Before you, I believed that love was endurance.

After you, I know it can be a collision.

Here we are once again; same city, same building, choosing letters over lips.

You say you didn’t do that night justice because you missed the Africa inked along my rib.

But listen to me.

You kissed the neck above it. You held the waist beneath it. You stood outside with me on Long Street when I was too drunk to stand straight and still looked at me like I was something sacred.

You did not miss me.

You just didn’t read the map.

You traced coastlines without knowing their names. You pressed your palm to history without realizing that it was history. That ink was not a destination; it was only proof that I have survived other countries, other lovers, other versions of myself and that I would still choose you.

If the alphabet runs backward tonight, maybe it is because we are walking back toward each other.

From Z to A.

From pride to pleasure.

From performance to presence.

We have both mistaken spectacle for intimacy before. We have both confused volume with truth. But the night was not empty. It was unfinished. There is a difference.

If you are brave enough, you don’t have to write back.

You can come and knock.