Portrait of My Heart

In my favorite memory of my Heart, she is making me tea in glass jars in her house with white white walls, lots of air and plants in glass jars on walls in Zanzibar. She flutters around in her kitchen grating ginger into a jar, throwing in dry hibiscus/rozela petals, some lemon, some honey. She hands it to me and the tips of my fingers burn – tea in glass jars looks pretty, but you pay for this price with the skin on the tips of your fingers. 

We sit outside on her porch, smoke cigarettes and chat shit. This becomes our daily routine for a while. I’d get off of work and ask what time she’d be home. I’d take the short walk from my apartment building and onto the side of the community housing we lived in where her two bedroom house stood. 

In my second best memory of my Heart, it is this same time, of the house with the white walls in Zanzibar, her beautiful beautiful son with her beautiful face has dropped a plate as we are setting the table. It crashes and splatters on the floor, makes a loud loud sound, and he is shocked and he is also scared. My Heart sees his face and tells him; it’s ok, it’s just a plate, you didn’t mean for it to happen, mistakes happen. 

In this memory my Heart heals me, my heart gives me an alternative pathway, another ending where the parent doesn’t get angry, the parent doesn’t lash out, the parent doesn’t become violent but rather the parent becomes soothing, softness, buffer and maybe in this version, I am less harder on myself. In this version, I grow up to be a person who is kinder with themselves in the face of mistakes. 

My Heart has too many loves and we all know she doesn’t belong to us. She is an experience we are grateful to have, to experience, to bask in. To illustrate what I mean, in a room of my Heart’s loves, she will say “hey love, please help/pass me…” and all of us will turn to her/answer to her/acknowledge her at the same time because we are all her loves and are made to feel her love. 

My Heart showed me the woman I could be if I chose to embrace my femininity. I had always been scared of softness, she showed me a version of womanhood where both of these things co-exist and complement each other. I learned from her to give myself permission and room to be beautiful – whatever this looks like for me. I pierced my ears for the first time, in the year I turned 30 and that unleashed in me a power I never knew I had. . 

My Heart reminds me of our duty to sisterhood, to womanhood asks me, “have you checked on so and so? You know she is our little sister and we must look out for her.” 

I think of the women she has introduced me to that look out for me. The women who storm through my apartment doors in the early morning whilst I ugly cry and pour white wine

into a glass and tell my partner that I am done, that it is time for him to call the therapist, I will not make it past today. My Heart’s heart barges into my living room door and as soon as I lay eyes on her I know I will be fine, I know I will survive another day even though this vessel doesn’t want to. 

My Heart is in Belgium, but her hearts are always on the look out for her other hearts. 

My Heart says we must look each other in the eyes when we toast our wine glasses and bring it to our mouths or we will have bad luck. 

There is a memory in which my Heart breaks my heart and mends it at the same time. We are still in Zanzibar, it is one of the many many nights we have sat on the porch and talked shit. 

My Heart tells me of the man in her childhood who did things to her that adults are not meant to do to children plenty plenty times. She tells me about what this did to her, this confusion, this destruction, this theft of the being, what this made her do to other younger children. 

In another memory, where we sit on the porch and talk shit, before she tells me about her haunting. I admit to her, something I’ve always found shameful, that my first sexual assault, as a child, was by a female. I think I find this shameful because I wonder what that means for my sexual identity. 

When my Heart tells me her sins, the things she did to other children, she tells this to me with the version of herself that is a doctor and a mother. A version of herself that has had to face certain aspects of herself and look them in the eyes and say, “you will not defeat me”. 

I do not see my Heart for a few days after that information. I blame it on work. I blame it on tiredness. I do not know how to tell her that I do not know what to do with the information she gave me. I do not know what to do with this portal she has opened in my mind. 

This is how I process this information: 

(i) My Heart knew about my hurt and knowing what she knew about it wanted me to have enough information to make a decision of how invested I wanted to be in our relationship. 

(ii) The universe was giving me an answer to a question and a confusion that had been gnawing at my mind for over two decades. When my Heart told me this, it allowed to me to start asking the right questions, to myself and within the family. I’ve been intentionally

gathering and asking the right questions. I’ve gathered enough rumors to confirm some of my suspicions. 

My Heart is the second person we call the morning after we get engaged. Thanks to my other heart, the news was traveling faster than we could tell people and I wanted her to know from my lips too. 

When I think of my Heart, I think of a goddess, someone who was sent into my[our] lives because she is exactly what we needed. She is a lesson on forgiveness, to the self. A lesson on existing for the self and the desires of/for the self. 

My Heart taught me how to desire and demand things from the universe and live as if your wish was already granted. It is interesting because there have been times where I have had to remind her of this lesson, to bring it close to her and rub it against her skin. There are plenty lessons that I have had to recycle for her benefit, and maybe this is how I too serve my Heart. 

My Heart is the first of my hearts to get a pass on things no one else gets a pass on. My Heart has no concept of time and refuses to. This is extremely frustrating for someone like me whose life is structured. Whenever my Heart comes to visit, I model my life in her way, I leave room for her and her tardiness, she moves with the spirits, I move with the capitalists. 

My heart trusts the universe and the universe trusts her. She believes and I want that belief, that faith that things will always work in my favor. I steal that belief and line the path of my life with a thin layer of it. I do not think I have bad luck, but I know that I am more likely to be an example. This is not a fact, it is what being a first born daughter has ingrained in me.

About the Author

Nyachiro Lydia Kasese is a Tanzanian poet, creative writer, documentarian and media director. In 2014, her short story Inside Outside was long-listed and published in CACE Africa’s Anthology Fire In The Night (2014). In 2017, Short story, My Mother’s Project published in The Caine Prize’s anthology in June 2017. Her poem Things That Were Lost in Our Vaginas was short-listed by the BN poetry award 2014. In 2015, a short poetry collection The Science of Nail Polish was published by Jalada Africa, 2015. In 2016, Paper Dolls, poetry chapbook Published in May by the African Poetry Book Fund. Poem, Silver Spoons published in 20.35 Africa: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry (2018). In 2019, her short story Home was published in the Unbreakable Bonds Anthology. Poems, I Lost My Teeth in a Fight, C.A.G, Compass, Forced Dreams, Self-Negotiation, published in An Anthology of East African Literature (2023). In 2025, her short collection Vumilia & Other Poems was published by Lolwe and has the poems Vumilia (Bear With It), Homesick, The Color Red, Hide and Seek, and The Cliffs. She is an Obsidian Foundation 2025 Alumni and a Cambridge Propel Prize (2026) shortlisted poet. She is also co-founder and Executive Director of Asusa Creative Writers Initiative, an NGO based in Dar es salaam.