Love Me Highly

Love me mildly,

Times passes and I revised it-

Now I could love you highly.

I require miracles and fancy rings

Like our favorite song,

The book of love, please buy me wedding rings

Let me sign you up for ten thousand miles

Find me on the other side

I wear your name on my chest

Like poetry lines

Love me highly.

I said I'm a nice girl, a nice lay

Time passes and I revised it-

Only if you say

We can be Adam and Eve

Because I've been rehearsing imaginary vows

In between easy conversation

And I see us in our birthday suits

Lying on expensive duvet covers, passing time

Looking at the moon, you are my moon.

I hate sleeping alone

I hope you stay the night,

Be so kind

I know I told you time and time again

I know I told you to live for now, but my heart flipped the script

Time passes and I revised it-

I'm time traveling to the future and I could be your wife

We have a big house and you sire my babies.

So please, love me highly...

Behind 'Love Me Highly'

This piece is a response to ‘Love Me Mildly’ and therefore, its from the perspective of a different woman to the ‘no strings attached’ woman I introduced before. This woman wants ‘A love so deep’ as I have defined it (a poem). After being mad for a long time at trashy men, she finally meets a man who makes her want to bring down her high walls and let someone in. A man who makes her question everything. So she says,

“Love me mildly

Times passes and I revised it-

Now I could love you highly”.

She’s tired of playing it cool. She sees the possibility of love before her and she wants it. All the things she detested before, didn't have time for and found silly- they all make sense to her now. "Miracles and fancy rings", falling in love makes her think of love songs that put into words the feelings swelling up in her heart. They are foreign and scary, but she would not trade them for anything. She feels reborn.

So she confesses to her lover,

“I said I'm a nice girl, a nice lay

Time passes and I revised it

Only if you say

We can be Adam and Eve”,

giving the impression that she wants to do things differently with this man, as opposed to how she had done before with others. Adam and Eve represent a beautiful union and she is willing to wait for the right time for that. She wants intimacy and a real connection with this man. She might even be willing to consider celibacy, as crazy as that sounds. He has proved himself worthy of being her moon, which in this case, I equate with what is referred to as ‘the one’.

She thinks back on her past encounters with all the other men who begged for her love and how ironic it is to have her heart flip the script on her. Now she hates sleeping alone and never wants to spend another day without this man. She is no longer just living for now and having fun. She is imagining a future with this man and it looks beautiful. She can see a big house, being his wife and the mother to his children.

She says it again to him, in case he did not hear her the first time “So please, love me highly…” because that is what a woman desires when she wears the right man’s name on her chest. To be loved in huge amounts.

In the end, I wanted to make room for both women in society. The hopeless romantics like myself who want to be loved highly, and the women who just want to take it easy and be loved mildly, or not at all.

- Lebo Bogatsu