Letters to the Seven Lovers: Part 2 - The Kapenguria Seven

In everyone’s life, there are those who leave marks, scars, or flowers on our hearts—soulmates, dreamers, rebels, and lovers of quiet depths.

To you, who loved me like freedom itself. I write to remember.

Dearest Jaeda - my patient lover.

I dreamed of you again last night—your face gets more stunningly beautiful with age, yet your spirit’s still forever young. They really do get prettier when you leave them. 
Are you still at Kapenguria? I remember the last time I saw you your hands were bound by lack of resources due to the shitty government in West Pokot. But your heart, still untamed. Do you remember when we said freedom is a lover we’d never leave? I do. I was there, watching, waiting. Staring deep into your eyes, to see who would look away first.
They called you ‘dangerous,’ but I knew you as the patient one—the one who waited for seasons to change for the both of us. Dangerous for who? For what? To our foes? To jonyiego? But I’ve learned you are indeed dangerous.
I heard that frustrated by the slow-moving preparations and the rising anticipation of the elders' impromptu visit, you grabbed a machete and sliced through a Zebu's hide yourself. And everyone was speechless, I also am. You are patient, but not that patient.
I guess that man that married you early wasn’t at all patient with you too, huh!?

Dearest Anika - yapper extraordinaire!

At times I swear I can still hear you speaking—your words cascading like rivers, unstoppable and true. Yappers can make and ruin your day in equal measure, and that was what I loved of you. You were the storyteller, the one who could wrap love in language and set it free in the world.
You spoke of dreams under the moonlight, of Madrid and Hawaii that we’d visit, of rhumba that we’d dance together, and of promises that we’d need to keep.
It was your words that saved me when I thought I was losing my mind and wanted to disappear in the dry bushes of Karachuonyo, away from this bustling noisy life of Nairobi that I abhor. You built our love with sentences too beautiful to forget, and when you whispered “forever,” I believed you. I still do, coz forever can mean different things.

I listened, always on your lap, your words falling on my ear like cooling dew on my thirsty soul. Your endless stories were like words etched in misted windows—but each one became a map to your heart. You knew that words, if wielded well, could shape worlds, and I was your world for a while.
But in the end, silence fell between us like an unspoken goodbye, and your absence became a story I never learned to tell. You were my janeko, my lover of language, the keeper of all the things I longed to hear. Even now, I keep listening for you.

Dearest Brie - my valiant lover.

You loved me like a fight you refused to lose. Fierce and untamed, you carried our love like a banner, unbowed in the wind. With you, every moment was a battle—against the world, against time, against the quiet fears I didn’t dare speak. You said love needed courage, and I watched you give it all. You fought for me when no one else did, and even when I broke your heart unintentionally, you stood tall.
You were fire, all blazing fists and furious love. You fought for me the way you fought for everything you believed in—unyielding, unafraid. I loved you for it, even when the fights turned inward, and I became the cause and the casualty of your battles. You told me love was labor, that it was something worth bleeding for, and in your embrace, I learned both passion and pain. You reminded me a lot of Bildad Kaggia, my restless rebel lover, Kaggia who loved too fiercely for his own good.

But in your fire, I found my limits; in your strength, I saw my own fragility. You taught me that love can be both beautiful and bruising. And for that, I’ll always be grateful.

Dearest Bambi - a white lily.

You showed love quietly—subtly—as though it was second nature. Our friends never spoke your name loud enough, but I did. Your silence was louder than their cackles. You never needed words to love me. You were there, always, with quiet hands and steady eyes. You carried our dreams without complaint, giving me everything and asking for nothing. You were my silence, my stillness, the one who showed love through presence, not promises. I leaned on you more than I ever admitted, and when you disappeared, it felt like losing a part of myself I didn’t know I needed. I wonder now if I ever truly knew you—if your giving was a way to hide, or if it was just who you were.

You taught me that love doesn’t always roar; sometimes, it hums like a distant song you only hear once it’s gone.

Love, to you, was a quiet offering—support, a shoulder, the small comforts of a life you tried to build around us. You funded our dreams, built scaffolding for hopes I was too afraid to claim as my own.
With you, I felt safe; with you, I could breathe. But you never let me see your fears, the weight you carried, and it made me wonder if I ever really knew you. You loved silently, steadily, until your giving became a disappearance. And when you were gone, I realized I had only loved your presence, never your person.

Dearest Francesca - lioness.

“A clenched fist is not always violent—it can be a promise.”

You were the brave one. The loyal one. The one who stayed when the world told you to leave this broke comrade and find someone who already has his money. With you, love felt like certainty—a choice made every day, unspoken but undeniable. You stood beside me, through doubt and through darkness, your quiet courage lighting our way. You taught me that love wasn’t about winning; it was about showing up.
But in your loyalty, I think you lost yourself, too—until one day, your staying became a kind of leaving. You walked away not with anger, but with the dignity of someone who knew it was time.

You were fearless, but not loud about it. There was something courageous in the way you stayed—when it was hard, when it was dark, when the world around us said we wouldn’t last. You were a quiet kind of brave, showing up every day, choosing me, even when I couldn’t choose my miserable self. I admired you for that, for your loyalty, for your refusal to quit.

I miss your steady hands, your unwavering heart. I miss the way you stayed.

Dearest Alora - the dreamer.

You dreamed for both of us. You saw worlds where none existed, painted tomorrows on the empty walls of our present. You believed love could build empires, that we could outlast everything if we just held on. I loved you for that—for the way you dreamed with open arms and fearless eyes. But dreams, you taught me, can become prisons when we refuse to wake. We held on too tightly, and in the end, our love became the weight that pulled us under. Still, I remember your dreams. I keep them close, folded away like love letters to a future we never reached.
You were the dreamer. You painted futures with broad, beautiful strokes, turning our simple days into stories worth telling. I loved your imagination, your belief that love could solve even the greatest struggles. You taught me to dream, too. But we lived too much in the “what could be” and not enough in the “what is.” Our reality became a weight you couldn’t carry, and I couldn’t keep chasing the illusions.

Alora—dreamer who flew too high, too far, and left me grounded with nothing but memories of what we almost were. Of what could have been!

Dearest Elysia - the unknown!

To that seventh lover who slipped through history like a forgotten heartbeat.

You were the one I could never name.

You were my seventh.

The love I felt but couldn’t touch, the heartbeat I heard in the quiet spaces between. You came to me like a whisper, like a story half-forgotten but always felt. I loved you without knowing why—without knowing who you were. Maybe you were love itself, slipping through my fingers as I tried to hold you. Chasing a butterfly instead of letting it land on me. Maybe you were the part of me I lost along the way. Or maybe you were just a dream, a ghost of a possibility I never dared to chase. But even now, I feel you.

I never really knew you, did I? You were like mist in the morning—there, and then gone before I could touch you. You came into my life like a shadow I couldn’t name, and yet you left an emptiness I couldn’t ignore. You taught me about mystery, about the parts of love that don’t need answers. Perhaps you were a lesson, or perhaps you were just a question I was never meant to solve.

You were my seventh, the ghost of a possibility, a love that might have been real or might have been a dream. Either way, I loved you, too.

In the spaces left behind. In the questions I can’t answer. You were my seventh, my unknown, my almost.

To the seven lovers, I write to remember.

PS: If you haven’t read Letters to the Seven Lovers: Part 1 - here it is! 

✍🏽Reagan.