Enough

Katlego K. Kol-Kes

You’re going to want
              to love me
and I will tell you
              not                   now
not                   today.

I can’t yet
find the words to
say I am enough
without you
              (without) hurting
                                    your feelings.

Each time
I see the words
dart across                   your                mind
ducking inhibition                   mounting
the seat of your lip
a quivering bow
that your tongue may fling
and loose consonants
your billowing cheeks hugging vowels
fletching words           abounding
to gild me and set me  
in a love                      you have laid
                                    in your mind.

I blink                         Can my eyes stay like this?
I speak                       fishtailing
              your words
              between mine
we waltz: I . am . light.           You . are . sound.

You will want to say
You love Me
I know – I have
a gift of being loved   
                                        by things
                                        and people
I would rather loved someone else
            some way else
or at least        something else about me
than my knack for making room
for everyone else but me.

I will have to say
I cannot love you
as you are
as you want to be
as you’d want me to be.

I cannot love you
                         because
I am                 enough.
Without you.
Without hurting.

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Katlego K. Kol-Kes is an unabashedly Queer-identifying sociologist, educator, researcher, and development practitioner from Botswana whose solutiondriven thinking uses communications methodologies and art to bridge gaps caused by systemic oppression. She is a published author, international award-winning performer, and a ground-breaking ARTivist. Instagram: @katkkolkes, Twitter: @kkolkes.

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