…Seventeen heartbreaks later i tell you this:
Your soul is too sacred to be tainted.
Your heart, a temple too holy to be a trial ground.
Your body too fragile to hold a broken heart.
And Like a six month fetus,
Your tears are too premature to be born…
Love Doesn’t Live in the Heart of A Child
As kids, we would often sneak into the sms boxes, the romantic fairy tales of hausa novels, and diaries of our grown up sisters, cousins and even the young aunties. Yeah, I know it’s a terrible thing to do and they would probably strangle me to death when they see this but; we were still kids, unable to clearly distinguish between right and wrong. Besides, we stole glances into the forbidden not because we had secrets to uncover, we simply wanted to have a glimpse, or rather a taste of what love and romance felt like.
Of course by then, they were nothing but mere quotes we liked, we did not have the intellectual capacity nor the emotional intelligence to reflect on what they truly meant. We would just screenshot the words in our brain, rush to dump it on the nearest empty page, then fold and hide it under the rubbles inside our school bags waiting patiently for the next school day so we would share with our friends. It was like undercover agents meeting to share Intel.
At first, the idea of sharing it with girls in our class never came to mind; but, soon the spirit of youth began to spring in our souls, we began to hear the whispers of our hearts and our minds believed it was love. It started with only two: a boy and a girl who fell in love, at least so they thought and the whole class rooted for their love story, hoping to see it last forever just like in the fairy tales. That was the beginning of a pandemic that would later envelope the class like a wildfire. Soon, every Romeo found his Juliet or at least they were assigned by the matchmakers even if the pair never agreed. It’s not what you are thinking, I am not the matchmaker, I was something bigger, the Shakespeare who wrote all the love letters and notes to be exchanged.
One-day, I was paired with a girl, just like the others. She was not interested and neither was I. But, nothing could outlive the persistence of our friends. I threw in the towel first, and began chasing after a hopeless dream. She was not ready to give her heart, and the weight of rejection came too heavy for my heart bear. I drowned in my self crafted sorrows and vowed never to give up. So, I wrote, and wrote, and wrote, until she opened the doors of her heart to me. The days went by and with them all the notes exchanged, letters, sweets, lunchboxes, stolen glances, the plays, the games, moments of nervousnes and intense exhilaration whenever a teacher would uncover a hidden secret. The torn noise makers and shared punishments, all these were the symbols of of what we assumed to be love. But love (in sense of romance) doesn’t live in the heart of a child, innocence does.
Many years later, the whole class sat upon a table at a reunion, reminiscing the past memories. Oh, we laughed a lot and ridiculed our younger selves for being too naïve. “How could we think it was love?” It wasn’t love, just our yearnings to belong, mere infatuations and fantasies of a child. We didn’t even know what love was, we didn’t even know what we wanted, we just had a dream, a sensation and decided to call it love. We ventured into the unknown too early, only to realize there is a great wisdom in the order of events and the passage of time (age).
Now all those love stories have faded with time. And I am all that remains of their existence, for I am still out here writing love letters and poems. I guess the world really goes in circles. Now the kids sneak in to take my words, paste them in a note, send it to a girl maybe to a boy, write a childhood fantasy and call it love! Worry not, time will open their eyes and life shall teach them the difference between infatuation, friendship, fairytales and realities of Love.
Wait till your heart is Ripe by Ameer Naseer Ameen
As kids, we wrote on every wall that:
"Love is love, but sometimes it's dangerous"
Though it reeked of danger, words as such were our motto.
Seventeen heartbreaks later i realized it was a warning,
One that we were too young to decipher.
We told ourselves that:
"Love is blind" and that "Age is just a number"
Seventeen heartbreaks later, i realized that love was
a mystery too deep for our feeble minds.
We never knew her face, talk less of her hollowed eyes.
And we couldn't tell between deep truths and her hidden lies.
Dear little one,
Seventeen heartbreaks later i tell you this:
Your soul is too sacred to be tainted.
Your heart, a temple too holy to be a trial ground.
Your body too fragile to hold a broken heart.
And Like a six month fetus,
Your tears are too premature to be born.
So,
Run, whenever a girl smiles and her dimples give you knee jerks.
Hide whenever a boy speaks and his voice makes you daydream.
Run, until you learn the true colors of love,
until you see it's reflection in your eyes.
Hide, till your heart matures and the time is ripe.
For a chick that comes out too early
becomes an easy prey for the vultures!
- Storiesfrom Young African Poets: Letters, Love And Time Of Ameer Naseer Ameen. - January 28, 2025
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