READ: YES, I WANT A MAN by Saddi Imaam

Yes Aunty, I want a man. I want to settle down and have all that you have gone on about, but you see, I want a man that is like me; a shattered man.

One that has been broken into many many pieces but has taken time to look for each one and then glued what he found together again. A man who knows how sweet life can be with a clarity that reveals itself at the point you shatter. Shatter into so many pieces, big, small, slivers – slivers stuck somewhere between twilight and dawn, pieces so broken they cannot be fixed.

I want a man that has learnt to lean far back so those cracks do not allow his very essence to seep out. I want to be the tender hand that moves him to the next groove when, like a scratch on a vinyl record with the pin stuck on, he falters, repeating that one line in his song.

I too have been shattered. I have used the glue carefully and diligently, from afar and in dim light. You cannot see how much I have mended, only he and others like him can see it, only he will have the understanding to lift up my pin when I am stuck in the same verse. Only he will know and with tenderness and kindness act as a wedge when I lean so far back I become unbalanced for fear that my essence will seep out.

I want a man so humbled by his humanity that he is able to recognise the same in me. Only he can love me the way I want to and deserve to be loved.

So Aunty, I want a man, but only a shattered one will do.

©Saddi Imaam