▸ Column · Modern Wakanda, newly opened to the world — an advice column in the Golden City, in the era of the king's outreach centres abroad
BLACK PANTHER replies.
Replied to by Black Panther, with a rebuttal from Killmonger.
The letter
My partner of four years — call him Tendai — accepted a posting at one of the new Wakandan outreach centres overseas and told me about it over supper, as casually as announcing a change of robe. He'd already printed a listing for lodgings he'd chosen. We had spoken vaguely of living abroad "one day," but I have a lease, a charge I was only just promoted into, and a mother two valleys over in the middle of her treatment — none of which, apparently, crossed his mind before he gave his word. When I said I felt blindsided, he told me he was "finally taking initiative," since I'm always the one who plans for us, as though signing away both our lives was a favour to me. I don't want to be the reason he refuses something genuinely worth doing. But I can't escape the feeling that a person who loves you does not make a four-thousand-mile decision and then ask, almost as an afterthought, whether you'll be tagging along. Is this an incompatibility I've been refusing to see — or is there a way back?
Black Panther replies
Slow this down. You ask two questions in one breath — is this incompatibility, or is there a way back — and you ask the second the way a frightened person does, hoping to be spared the first. I will not flatter you there. Look at the wound first, then at the man.
He says he took initiative because you carry the planning. There may be a true thing buried in that — even a thoughtless partner's mouth can speak one — perhaps he has felt small beside your competence and seized the largest lever within reach. Examine it honestly, for your sake. But a real grievance does not redeem the form of this. Four thousand miles is not initiative; it is a throne claimed with no council called. He weighed his wish, and named your absence from that weighing a gift. He did not weigh your lease, your new charge, your mother in her treatment.
So do not yet decide whether to follow him. Decide whether he is able to unmake this choice and remake it with you, in the open, as two. If he can sit inside what he did to you and choose again — there is a way back. If "taking initiative" is the nearest he comes to remorse, you already have your answer. A king who rules from his wounds rules badly, my friend; do not flee in anger. But do not mistake the fear of being alone for love, either.
— Black Panther
Killmonger weighs in
Cousin, you did your noble thing again — "find the true wound in his claim," "see if he can choose again." Always so generous to the man who already handed her the receipt. Look at it. He printed the apartment. He drew the whole life and left one empty chair by the door, in case she felt like tagging along. That's not a partner who forgot to ask. That's a man who already decided what she weighs — and a mother in chemo didn't make his list. Be angry. That anger is the most honest thing in that takeout box. Just don't aim it at yourself, clawing for "a way back" into a house he built without you. Stop auditioning for a part he already cast. You don't beg into somebody's blueprint — you go find the people who drew you in from the start.
— Killmonger
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