If you ask Andrew about love, he will laugh at the notion of falling in love with more than one person in one lifetime, but I would not take his word for it. While others had to sacrifice two black chickens, fight a kangaroo and twerk for their ancestors, Andrew met the love of his life and just knew.

Congratulations on your engagement, if you read this. How does it feel to be God’s favorite?

Priscilla, on the other hand, will look you in the eye for a good five seconds, probably gauging how to tell you that love is a scam by businesses to make money out of the bothersome feeling.

Has she been in love? Yes, she thinks so. She is almost sure that she has been in love more than once.

She will let out a low ‘hhmm’ and cross her arms on her chest. Where does she begin explaining about love, her love?

Okay, she starts and eyes you again, quickly fixing her glasses over her nose. She doesn’t know whether to cry or laugh, love has shown her many faces. She would tell you about this boy, whose name I will not name; he was funny and charming, and he quickly snatched her heart and imprisoned it in a chest together with his. That summer was short lived, she will explain scrunching her face at the memory. She would probably suck air through her teeth and clap her hands as African mothers do to express anger, fatigue, or disapproval.

Six years and a whole circus queen later, the man has not been chopped as she has done for any pestering men. Her heart remains a prisoner in some cage, she knows not where and probably does not want it freed. She was burned by a love meant to keep her warm.

Never again, she will mutter under her breath, quietly asking God to keep forbidding that love ever scar her again.

What would Tadala say about love, I wonder. She wears her heart in a titanium locket, guarded by two gorgons, and where is this locket? In the labyrinth with the minotaur. You get the gist, don’t you?

It is only recently that her heart has been spotted on her sleeve, shocked the voice out of me I will admit. But what would she say about love? Would she say it is train that comes barreling towards you and should be handled with care? Or would she cheer you to step on the train tracks and see where that takes you?

I am not sure if she is a hopeless romantic, unlike some of us who are more hopeless than romantic, or she is just cautious about putting herself out there to be hurt? She eyes any love/affection handed to her with the same skepticism you would someone handing you a can of beetles on your birthday. To her, there is always a catch, always something behind the pleasantries.

What do you want with me? I think she asks all her suitors. Giving them a once over, showing them her serious face. The same face she reserves for the people who touch her property without express written permission from her. She likes to intimidate them; to her the sexiest thing a man can be is a little scared of her.

Myra, on the other hand, never learns. They tell her fire is hot and it burns, Myra must go see it for herself; she refuses to take your word for it. Just because it burned you, it does not mean it will also burn me, she will say with the confidence of a monkey swinging on a broken branch. She will get burned by the blue flame, as she was by the orange flame, and the red flame before that, but that will not deter this moth from being attracted to fire. You would think she likes to be burned from her gravitation towards all the dark things love is professed to be; the dark obsessions and the senseless passions.

Quite the opposite.

If you ask Myra about love, she will smile. She has found love in a space she had reserved for self-love. And please, before you run to go lecture her about the absurdity that is love, read the beginning of her paragraph.

She will smile and recount to you all the things love can be; a sweet serenade, an act of surrender, a muse. In love’s embrace, she has found her that vulnerability has offered her joy. She has lost herself in infatuations before this and knows all the things love is not supposed to be, and she knows that true love sets you free. She knows that there is togetherness and individuality in love, that it exists in spaces that allow it to thrive, and passion is a fickle flame.

Goodluck to all the lovers there, especially those looking for ‘The One’. Love, in all its beautiful forms, comes from the soul. We were made to love and to be loved in return. It is the affirmation that our existence matters to someone else, that we are cherished, flaws and all. To be loved is to find refuge in another’s presence, to feel seen and understood, and to experience a sense of belonging.

Always the warmest hugs,

Writing from a space filled with multicolored dreams and love.