FORBIDDEN.

“When?”

“At the museum”, I replied.

“Really?” she answered as she slightly tilted her head and squinted.

“Yes Banda, static. It felt like static, every time we touched!” I goggled at her as if it were possible to transfer the memory.

She scoffed and brushed it off, implying I was mistaken. However, I knew she didn’t want to talk about it.

Banda never did like it when we were too close in public. She maintained a “respectable” distance between us, in supermarkets, straight clubs and on that day at the museum. Our dates had the air of formal business meetings.

I couldn’t hold her hand or rather she didn’t allow me to. One Sunday evening, on a stroll, I fumbled with her palm, trying to entwine her lanky fingers in mine. “What are you doing?” she scolded, as she quickly moved my hand away to take its place on my thigh.

“No one’s looking”, I implored.

“What if they are?”

“We could be sisters!” I interjected. “Heck! I look big enough to be your mom, Banda.”

Her expression hardened. She went silent. “I don’t like trouble you know”, she answered subdued.

Perhaps it is was me. I loved the thrill of shamelessly showing my affection in public. I longed for the puzzled looks on people’s faces when we didn’t conform.

Over time, her fear seeped into my mind. What if they were watching? What if I didn’t pass for her sister or her mother? Slowly, I began to keep my hands to myself in public. Not even showing affection in ways that were considered platonic.

The only place we could brazenly be, was behind the closed door in her studio apartment, with the blinds drawn round the clock. There’s a way Banda looks at me when we’re alone. The same way I look at a chocolate dessert. There’s love, passion, a kind of hunger and at times despair. I can tell it pains her too, that we can’t make eye contact in matatus, or walk arm in arm down the street.

Especially on that afternoon at the museum. Being right next to her, yet feeling like she was far out of reach. I felt like a caged bird, fluttering away, demanding to be set free. Each time she brushed up against me, there was electricity and knots in my stomach. With every graze, the walls of my cage began to close in. Still, I kept my hands to my sides and together we hovered around the old, decomposing museum, hollow, like forlorn ghosts.