TOO MANY EDITORS

I love the way you look at me. I love the way you look. I love you.
*****
There is this boy. Actually, there is always a boy. If there is no boy, there are many boys.
I decide to write him a letter to say that I have built him a place in my heart; permanent and free of Nairobi floods. The words stress how I feel about him and the number of times I find myself dreaming of the two of us together. My plan is to post it as a piece of writing because personal experiences can be changed into works of art. With letters, there is no word limit and so emotions can be expressed the same way they are experienced. Mine contains phrases like the one above to make my intentions very clear. 

Once I am done with my letter, I'll have to consider some things first. My readers are many and I have to make sure they all feel comfortable with the work I put out. These are people who have walked with me in this writing journey. Surely I can't let them down because of a fling.

First on the list is my mum and all other moral authorities in my life. I don't pay my own rent or buy my own food. Even if I was financially stable, I would never live with the scolding and mean stares. I therefore can't tell this boy that my loins have not known the touch of a man in many moons. I might also need to delete the details about new positions we need to try out and the props we can use. Those are things I can always snapchat him anyway. The detail about missing class to go meet up with him to get high an unnecessary detail. He knows I skived school to get high, he was there, we don't need the whole world to know just incase someone decides to enrol us to a rehab.

All my friends know I write and they are my die hard fans. They always pay keen attention to the stuff I say about them. I can't afford to walk alone so I better cut back on the trolls. Convincing my man that I'm better than they is my main aim but I'm not in the business of stepping on others to get to the top. I'll have to scrap off this line, the one that shows Cindy still calls nail polish cutex and she has no idea what box braids are, bado anashuka *pees.

For the sake of my new cool kid friends I have to replace 'guan like Guantanamo Bay' for something gisty like 'chill like an old man without his blue pills.' Street cred muhimu maze.

I have to make my work activist-proof. Omitting the fact that  we first met when I threw a bottle of soda out of the window hitting his face would keep people like Jewel and other environmentalists off my neck. I'll earn points if I say that the first night we spent together was after an #Occupy protest and he was afraid that I was too teargassed to go home. They need to know that I am aware of my rights as a Kenyan citizen and I fight for them. Anything contoroversial has to go. Me I don't want to be termed ignorant or heartless. Everything has to be politically correct and unabusive.

How writer-ish does my work sound though? Maybe I should look at Arunga's Dear Dorises and see if they sound the same. I think I'll be safer if I sound like another established writer. That will mean that my work is commendable. All these experiments, 'nights with you are cold. so cold that they're burning me,' we can try out new things once we get to the top.

But who am I kidding? I'll never be as good. When I sit with my fellow writers and show them this piece they will probably look at me with disgrace. These are people who spend sleepless nights coming up with otherwordly phrases like 'muthokoi blue' and I show up with a love letter? Does this article even have structure? Am I saying something that people want to hear?
By now my work sound basic like Taylor Swift lyrics. For sure, this boy, like everyone else will not appreciate taylor words because they seem like they were done swiftly. I should just write about basic stuff... like the weather.

Something like, 'it was a dark and stormy night.'