I felt just as the apple tree behind the house that my dad had cut down for refusing to bear any fruit or the dying flowers after Baba Ojo, our gardener got fired for impregnating the house girl.
Love makes you blossom like a flower, the way I blossomed for you that night when I gave you everything.
I loved the idea of us together, so whenever my eyes caught yours, I tried to make you see our love through my eyes, show you how beautiful we could be.
We never got there but that was okay, because I was ready to understand. I settled for the love that brought loneliness with it.
Now I'm staring into nothing, replaying the images that live in my mind.
A child, our child, blood everywhere, the hanger in my hands. I was in the pool of my baby's blood. Its very existence. I was screaming. I still hear my baby cry in my head. Love makes us kill. And the blood never goes away.
The other girl. The pretty one. She didn't know about us, I hated the way she held you like you were hers. Her eyes called me names. You waved me off and called me a nobody. Her high-pitched laughter, I remember the annoying sound of it.
The pills my mom had in her drawer. Pain killers. The doctor had thought they'd take away mother's pain after daddy left her for a girl of my age. They never did. Mom was gone now. The pain took her.
I swallowed all the pills left in the tiny bottle and hoped they would be enough.
They weren't. I survived.
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