My Love Search Has Ended Poem by Sarah Mkhonza

I thought of love as faces close to each other,
No expression but intense exchanges of looks,
No words but sounds of two people's bodies clinging,
In endless mumbling, sighing and minting of smells
not yet known.


I heard the word in my wicked youth,
of wanting to know by experiencing it,
this kissing and pushing of things unknown,
the squirming and turning in cavernous places,
of limbs of muscle sliding into each other.

I discovered a truth kept from me,
that I would forever wonder about,
As long as I live in search of love,
For the pictures I had bought from childhood,
Had been bought at the store of endless questions,
Where answers were even more expensive if found.

What is it like to love I ask?
It is like two teenagers kissing,
Smirks of laughter in my grandmother's answer.
I just did that with Mfana from next door.
Did you see the sparks you set up?
No, but just a little awkward shaking of us.
Of those images in my childhood sessions,
There we stand and that's all there is,
For love never becomes
You are the one who becomes.