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Love ends in the night in bed, when her thigh brushes against yours, and before you can think about what you’re doing, you draw away, your heart racing because you think her palm is about cup your shoulder. Hoping, hoping, she brushed against you in her sleep turning by accident, in this night when there is no electricity and when her wavering voice whispers, “Darling,” you’re already quickly saying, “I’m thirsty,” stumbling out of bed, bumping against the door, running.

Love ends with simple words when she says, “I’m not sorry I did it,” the look on your face telling her more than all your furnace heated arguments will ever tell her because in the silence after, before the Tusker bottle mouth falls away from your lips, your face your eyes flickering with the shock of recognition like the look of dying under torture tells her all she will ever need to know. And walking in silence out of that bar, down the stairs of Garden City with the shops long shut up from The Venue, Kampala will never be the same again, changing.

Love ends with her phone in ‘Silent’ vibrating like a nestling jumping in her palm, your number a mute scream on the screen, before he tosses it back for her back into her black bag and tells her her first lie, “Tell him you never saw it,” and because his hand is at the back of her head in her braids drawing her close in for the first kiss, afraid, not wanting this to stop, she closes her eyes. Love begins with fear. Love ends with fear. Love begins with fear.

Love begins when “I’ve never been this afraid of being dumped. It would shatter me completely.” With Kim love begun in fear when I knew I could lose her, I was in love. Let me tell you how.

Kim +11 will be coming soon.