A poem about growing up by David Tombale: Without you

Without you is about being young and what we first learn of girls as boys and where that can eventually take us.

Without you

There is this place in my hometown
called Thema, and there I met you-

you were just a little girl and
I was a boy too young to know what
Woman meant but I still needed you.

I needed the way you’d shove me,
the way we’d wrestle, the way we’d laugh;
now riding round on these mean streets
in Gaborone I imagine I see you happy-

a handsome boy has his arm draped
around you and you’re looking at him
the way I dreamt you’d once see me;
as if the brown of my eyes was as beautiful
as the night skies glowing with the pinpricks
of stars going on and on long into eternity.

I imagine you somewhere in Pretoria in
an outdoor café drinking an espresso like a
grown up while he talks loudly about his
job but then a feeling strikes you,
a sharp bite of longing sinks in so deep
that it makes you bleed but only in your soul.

You’ll turn your gaze towards the west
and your mouth will dry and somehow
you’ll know that I’m somewhere close
walking on without you.