by Mariam Kwezi 2023

I don’t remember the exact moment when I learned that love could be dangerous. Maybe it was the first time I looked at another girl and felt something I wasn’t supposed to feel. Maybe it was the day they caught us. Maybe it was the silence that followed.

I grew up in a home where prayer was part of the air we breathed, but tenderness was conditional. My mother believed in discipline, not in conversation. I tried to be the perfect daughter — quiet, obedient, respectful — but there was always a part of me that didn’t fit.

At my all-girls school, I met Blessed. I didn’t mean to fall for her; it just happened slowly — in the small smiles, the shared notes, the stolen glances that made the world feel softer. For the first time, I felt seen. It wasn’t rebellion. It wasn’t sin. It was love.

But when they caught us, everything collapsed. The teachers treated us like we were a disease. I was expelled, shamed, and blacklisted. My name turned into a warning to others.

At home, my mother didn’t ask what happened. She punished. She beat. She cut my hair and said she was cleansing me of shame. She stopped my schooling for two years, and I became her servant in my own home. I wasn’t allowed to talk to my siblings. I wasn’t allowed to go outside. It was like being buried alive while still breathing.

When she finally believed I had “changed,” she let me go back to school. I promised her I would behave. I smiled when she looked. I prayed when she asked. I learned to hide.