Wednesday 23 December 2015

Untitled

How do you know the one?
What sign is the universe supposed to give so you know
Your soul mate,
Destinies intertwined. Fates to become one
That this person will always love you.
Always understand
Never leave you.

That this person will not fall out of love with you
Bola didn't know what that meant till her husband for 22 years told her he didnt love her anymore and he had fallen in love with another woman.

That this person will not become your abusive husband.
Sara finally got the courage to leave her husband,  showing up at her parents' sometime after midnight, swollen faced in torn clothes sobbing out two years of domestic violence.

That this person will not make you feel like nothing, undesirable nothing.
Irene knew her husband chased younger girls. She now weighed 3 times more and wore big unattractive clothes to hide her tummy folds. It had been years since her husband touched her or even wanted her in that way. But she wasn't the same person in their wedding photo that hung on the wall of the living room.

That this person will not make you see love differently, smaller than what it is.
"You shouldn't show you care so much, it's the number one rule of the love game" Anita advised her heartbroken friend.

That this person won't make you pretend that you are happy and what it is love just because the truth is too painful and the loneliness unbearable.

Wednesday 9 December 2015

09-12-2015

I hope your boyfriend isn't a philanthropist. Boyfriend to the boyfriendless. A listening ear to their many problems. a shoulder for them to cry all their lonely tears on.

I hope you will not end up loving someone who will leave you. Someone who will dizzy you such that anyone after him will seem like a shadow and love will become that bitter regret.

I hope you don't grow up witnessing your mother live in a loveless marriage. I hope your heart doesn't break looking at her ever sad eyes and her feeble attempts at smiling. I hope you are unaware you are the reason she is sacrificing her happiness.

I hope you do not look at your life, years from now and feel like shit. I hope you will be able to forgive yourself for all the wrong decisions you made in the name of love, the careless ones you made because you were tired of being lonely.

I hope you grow up scared of men, their sex and their semen.

The man is the boy with intense eyes that told you he loved you, the one whose stares were so hot you got nervous and fidgeted with your sweaty palms. The man is the boy who made your heart flutter and your eyes dreamy. The man is the boy who made you smile a lot, who made you hope. The man is the boy who left you after you bared your soul to him, the one who made living unbearable.

Their sex is his penis, standing like a sharp weapon, ready to tear your woman space. Their sex is his sweaty voice in your ear, telling you - "just the tip", "i'll be gentle", "i want you so much right now". Their sex is the deafening pain you feel when he puts more than the tip inside. Their sex is his violent thrusts despite your tears, pleading and feeble attempts to push him away.

Their semen is morning sickness, weight gain and a stomach the size of a pumpkin. Their semen is a big round secret under your dress that can not be hidden. Their semen is disappointed parents, your yelling father and your crying mother. Their semen is stopping school because the principal thinks you are a bad example. Their semen is leaving church because you can not deal with the judgemental stares. Their semen is housing another human inside you, their semen is labour pain, your baby splitting your body open to come out. Their semen is a crying baby, money for baby things, raising a child by yourself.


Tuesday 17 November 2015

17/11/2015

It had been a bit more than a year since you had told someone those words
"I love you"
Admitting that you were helplessly drawn to another person. Making yourself the worst kind of vulnerable. Giving your heart to someone else. You remember how that wrecked you. How you had struggled to live after he left.
How everyone thought you were stupid for making yourself miserable for him but they didn't understand you did not know how to go back to being strangers with someone that has seen your soul.
How it had been 10 months since you spoke to your best friend.
And somehow things were never the same.
You do not know how to tell people he took a part of you with him, how the bits of you left cannot contain anyone else but yourself.
Now no one gets close enough to know you. You managed to leave every beautiful thing that could have been love.
The guy last year, on your birthday dinner, with hopeful eyes and a diamond ring in the pocket of his jacket. You told him not to embarrass you in public.
He never got the chance to bring it up again, that was the last day he saw you.
You just knew they were all going to hurt you.
The one who wanted to know your name the morning after drunken lust and meaningless sex. The one that looked so appealing after your sixth shot of tequila the night before at the bar.
You told him there's no need.
Your friend asks you why you are being difficult and why you have refused to try again, you tell her they are all going to leave, she asks you how you know, you tell her you can smell rejection from miles away.


Sunday 8 November 2015

8-11-2015

Being alive is about feeling things.
To love. Hate. Hurt. Grieve. Break. And be destroyed.
And build ourselves up to be destroyed again.
We are built to survive through pain not manage it or dull the sensation
Because then it never really goes away.
I hope one day your pain will be useful to you.
That it will give you. Strength. Courage. Comforting words to give another
Going through a similar experience.
Or it will give you a a gift.
And one day you will write words that people will find inspiring
Words written with your bleeding heart and tears
Because in your pain lies all the light you currently cannot see
And all the future life has for you.

Friday 6 November 2015

06- 11-2015

Because this is exactly what's on my mind this morning. 

I don't feel a woman is demanding or selfish when she wants effortless amazing love where the other person treats her exactly how she wants to be treated without having to spell it out to him. 

Virginia Wolf gets me on this.

“I’ve been quite miserable. You’d call me selfish — but I feel it more and more; I feel the need to be alone with people who understand without having to try. I need that sense of effortlessness right there — I just refuse to hold back these days. I refuse to settle for some lucidity of mind in my own privacy and then no more energy left, no more vitality left to keep me going. It’s all anxiety and restlessness. And — I find it more and more hard to waste my time on people I don’t truly care about for I feel they don’t care enough either. Or they do care, in their own way, but it’s just not meaningful to me whatsoever. Does it all lie in my complete inability to receive? At any rate, I think they surely like the idea — that’s why they obviously keep coming around for tea! But at this point, I can’t have that — and there’s no point, really, for they don’t understand, ever, and in all my misery I am still pretty arrogant and demanding enough to believe that it is my right to wish to be felt rather than be understood but that doesn’t seem to happen either. So, here it is: is it possible? I ask. Is “emotion” possible without “understanding” of some sort?”


- Virginia Woolf

Sunday 18 October 2015

The Road to Recovery



Do the difficult things while they are easy and do the great things while they are small. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a step – Lao Tzu
If we want change in Nigeria - we need to start small.
Start with your boss’s friend who at the last presentation, told you you had a nice smile with his eyes fixed on your round ass in your tight skirt.
Start with your fiancé’s mother who is against your marrying her son because she thinks edo people are diabolical.
Start with your father who beat your mother last night till she was red and bruised for serving him soup that was not freshly made.
Start with your pastor who told his congregation that the church will be collecting 5 sets of offerings as his Range Rover and Mercedes Benz are not befitting for the man of God that he is. He has his eyes set on higher grounds - a new private jet because he is the mouth piece of God.
Start with the boy you met on twitter, the one that made you feel special just so he could get you drunk and feel you up.
Start with your married uncle who gives you orgasms against the same wall his wedding picture frame hangs on.
Start with the fear of going to your village, the many deaths and the wickedness that lurks in the hearts of your kinsmen. You have heard the charm to cause a stroke costs just ₦50. How can evil be so affordable?
Start with the lies you told your parents, you were never really in school, always in the cars of strange men.
Start with your swollen heart and all the baggage of hurt it carries – the names of the people you have refused to forgive.
Start with the sins you commit without flinching and the abominations that happen that do not rob you of sleep.

Wednesday 9 September 2015

Not The Worst Advice

To my fellow females,

Beware of men
Beware of love more

Don't let the both of them confuse you.

Most girls have spent years wondering what went wrong
Spending nights awake and unsleeping
Trying to become a gifted person who reads minds
Just so they can understand what he was thinking
why he acted the way he did
what made him go away like that
leaving them, confused, alone. With a smaller spirit

When he touches you the first time.
Try not to be so naive or flinch noticeably
Because he is a wolf and they notice weakness
Act like you've had men roam through your skin all your life

Some might be gentle with you
Others are too blinded by their lust to care about your pain

If he is gentle
You may like it alot
It might become all you think about
Especially when he is gone
Don't freak out. You're human
Woman
A slave to your hormones and emotions

Sometimes love isn't about making already broken promises and holding hands
Sometimes he isn't the one who will break your heart
It will be you making promises you cannot keep
promising yourself to someone else, making yourself a home for another's heart
When you fail to tell him you're the wild wild west
The driest desert in which he cannot survive
An ever moving tornado
And when he is suffocating and he leaves
It wont be his fault but yours.

Other times he will be the one breaking your heart
Falling in love with someone else
Because he made himself god to classify someone as more of a woman than you are
More attractive, a better lover, a better human

On these days the vodka burning down your throat
Gulp after gulp
Might be your only form of relief
You live on these bottles till you have no more questions
Till life becomes as meaningless as your feelings

Go for more simpler men
The ones that are honest about their lust
The ones that make no promises
Their love is simple
Easier for you to understand

That kind of man
Will pin you against the wall with his hand under your shirt
And you will feel it - Love.






Wednesday 19 August 2015

Unsolicited advice to young Nigerian women working 12 joyless hours

My friend and I have been lamenting on how much less of our lives we seem to own under the stress of demanding work hours. She wrote this today and for the first time we felt oddly comforted by our grief and laughed at our predicament. Here's her advice to the rest of you like us.

1) when you start to think you want a life away from the office. Count your bills, spread them on the table. Sigh a lot.

2) when you tell your father you want to be a writer and he lists the names of 9 starving writers, add your name as the 10th on the list. Recite this list before bed.

3) when your mother asks if you can feed a family on passion, eat only laughter for a week. Go back to her and reply you can’t.

4) when you come across an old classmate on Facebook living the life you want, don’t comment. Click like.

5) when the madam at the office asks how you plan to balance your long hours and a husband, tell her men know how to cook. Laugh with her when she laughs at your reply.

6) when the older man who makes crude jokes at work tells you how ungrateful you are, and how he waited 5 years for his first job, apologise. Thank him for his observation.

7) when you call your friend who still hasn’t found a job in 2 years, don’t ask about it. Don’t complain that you work too long. Talk to her about the weather, about your new tailor. Joke a lot.

8) when you boss tells you that the your generation is doomed, ask him why he stares at you when your back is turned (ask inaudibly). Fix your eyes on his family picture. Agree with him.

9) when your American friend tells you you’re wasting your life, that you should follow your dreams, don’t tell her she’s right, just reply “I understand. But this is Lagos”.

10) when you dread the weekdays, look forward to Friday, sit at a new bar and reinvent yourself. After 3 shots of vodka tell the bartender about your life on the island as a photographer. Tell the man sitting beside you after 6.

11) Spend Saturdays being your mother’s daughter. Cook 4 different soups. Picture a hungry husband at your table. This is the life you should crave. Never speak about suicide.

- Because I was asleep when the walls started caving in

Friday 14 August 2015

Do You Remember How To Feel?

What will you remember most? Years from now? When you're 80, absent and empty.

Memories?

Regrets?

Grief?

Secrets?

Blackouts?

Sins?


Will it be your first orgasm?
That felt like sudden rain
A rush of emotions you didn't have time enough to understand
You felt yourself release. Your thick woman fluid flowed down your thighs shamelessly as you clung to him.You were against the wall, legs wrapped with desperate need around him urging him deeper inside you.
You melted away like dissolving spray
Like mist into nothing
In that moment forgetting who you are
A virtuous woman raised by Christian parents
Head of the youth revival, member of the prayer force team
But you stood there, barely standing, unabashed moaning into his sweet flesh
the whole time
His name stuck somewhere in your throat


When your dad died?
How you cried like the women on TV do
Folding at the middle like a hundred naira note
Your mother didn't cry like them though
Instead she began to shrink into nothing
barely speaking, barely eating
till her depression killed her
Her death was a strange relief to you
You didn't cry
That night you said some prayers
It had been a while since you spoke to God
You thanked him for taking your mummy away.
It was wrong for someone to suffer so much
someone who was alive against her will.

How loving the wrong person changed you?
After that came pain that kept you up at night
Emptiness that came with waking up with nothing and no one
How he taught you how to make enemies of people
Because you couldn't bring yourself to understand
How someone could be so savage
After giving all of yourself
He left, leaving you broken with a swollen heart
You become ashamed and vulnerable
Remembering every dirty thing you made yourself do for him
How you were not woman enough to keep him
She looked better than you did
She had the right face, right body, right walk, right laugh
He looked mesmerized when ever she would laugh and run her scarlet nails across his face
Most times you grieved for being alone
other times you wondered if he had found what he wanted.



14.08.2015.

What was wrong with your first marriage?
You wanted just the boy and not his baggage
Not his mother who thought Edo girls were witches
Or his sister and her fake niceness
The thought of embracing new traditions weakened you
Pay respects to the Umuada for acceptance-
Bribing your way through their hearts-
Becoming a smaller version of yourself -
Because submission and reverence 
for your husband and his entire village was their watch word
You wanted the boy but he was too weak to be a man
He knew you were different but he wouldn't stand up for you
wouldn't stand up to his mother and his people
He looked at you with coward eyes that begged you to comply
when strange women dictated the rites of the marriage
Bear a child so they know you're fertile-
Renounce your people because they were evil-
Dress like a maid because you had become a man's property-
Before they let you marry their son
So you walked out because you had waited on your father all your life
And you'd be damned if you waited on another man
You had waited so long for something different 
Searching for a fire you could not name
You could not shrink yourself for them
Your dreams were bigger than him
So you left him because he chose to hold onto it all instead and let you go


Wednesday 27 May 2015

27-May-2015.

Feeling beautiful things for the first time can be confusing
It always feels like its the only time, like that is the only person
that will ever love you
So you become silent, you settle, accept whatever, make excuses
Tinu was silent through an abusive relationship
Bola settled for being Alhaji's mistress
Ronke accepted the disrespectful insulting words of her husband even in front of their guests on his 50th birthday celebration
Ayo made excuses for her husband, when he came home late, drunk and reeking of another woman.
The first time isn't the last time, so do not hold on to someone who doesn't love you enough, respect you enough.

Some of us, have never really felt  love, joy, pure attention, real connection.
To some of us, life is a wilderness, loneliness is family
Some of us have spent years, waiting to feel our hearts flutter
Waiting to be called someone else's
Sometimes we blame ourselves, make ourselves feel less of a person
undesirable, unloved, not wanted.
Being in a world and meeting nothing that wants you can do that to you
Sometimes when you're at the edge of your own cliff, all you really need is a long deep weep in the arms of someone you love,
No words.
someone who loves you enough to hold you and understand
Your 21'st birthday wish was to find love, for someone to touch you in those places, for someone to even want to
You wonder how empty 25 years can be and how the fuck can someone go 25 years without being touched, without being loved like that?
Please, be gentle and patient with yourself
These feelings you haven't felt yet, give them time, they are almost here.

Sunday 3 May 2015

5-3-2014

She was where love came to die. Her heart was weighed down by the heaviness of their absence, each one of them. She made a room for everyone of them even after they left. She still entertained thoughts of them still and the lives she could be living if they stayed. It came from being too easy to talk to, from getting so attached too easily, from being too straightforward in a world where everyone did and said the opposite of what they felt.

Every time she tells her body no. She tells her heart not to. Tells her senses not to pick up the nice compliments, his intense eyes, how warm his fingers feel when they hold hers, the way his presence heat her up on the inside, the way his lips welcomes hers to deeper intimacy when he kisses her goodnight.

Sam was honey. She didn't need to tell him she needed him. He was always there, doing things, saying things, making her believe she was not alone. Till he just stopped and her world stopped too.

Tony thought he wanted her. He found something dark and appealing about her silence, her eager eyes, the nakedness of her words. He found himself exhausted on the second day after they met. Messaging her became a chore. She needed too much.

Ron was a tornado that carried her in his rotating wind. He said the right words that had him buried against her breasts, his harsh loud breaths on her skin in tune with his careless thrusts into her. His was the shortest and the easiest to understand. She knew what he wanted, she didn't expect him to stick around but he left her devastated all the same, a bit less of the person that she was.


Monday 6 April 2015

Love letters



My love,

I beg Sam a lot before he agree to give his cousin my letter to give you. I give him the money from my shop from last month. He is telling me to let him touch me but I not agree. He still want me to give him my something but I tell him it is you I want. I is missing you a lot. I wear the chain you give me before you go everytime. I wear it even to sleep and bath. I am afraid something is happen to you. It been how many months since you leave here to go Lagos and you no call Tayo’s sister cousin number I give you. Everytime I go there and ask if you call, they say no. You no write too, and I know you write well, better than me. I still have the poem you write me first time we meet. I keep it under my pillow to sleep every night so I dream of you. I dream of the both of us together and it make me cry because you not here.    
    Amaka and the other girls is laughing at me a lot. They say you leave me for city girl but I tell them is not true, that our love is real. That you will come back to me soon. I know they just jealous of me. Because you fine and you are my own. When you come back, I laugh at them too. I hope you is eating well. I want to cook pounded yam and okro that you like and give Sam cousin but he say no. He don’t want me to send you food. I think about you a lot. I think about the night before you leave a lot. The way you touch me. I hold myself to sleep and imagine is you. I want you to touch me like that again. I think about it everytime, the thing that you do me with your tongue. I can never forget. I not telling anyone like you tell me to. And I drink the herb you give me so I not get pregnant. Even my parents not know. Njideka, the palmwine tapper's daughter is telling people you get her pregnant. That you is the father of her child. I go to her house and beat the liar. I almost kill her and her bastard child. She want to tie you now that she know you is a big man in lagos. She that she open her leg to every man here in the village and now she not know who get her pregnant. I is planning on coming to Lagos to see you. I work on Aunty Ifediora’s farm for small money and I is saving money from my shop too. By Christmas I is having enough money to come and be with you my love.
Your sweety Nnenna.


Friday 27 March 2015

26 July 2015.

I stopped living the day I discovered I was alone. He was still there, his clothes shared the locker with mine, his masculine scent still on the bed we shared.
But he didn't love me and I was alone.
He didn't notice me anymore, not when I started wearing make up or when I started wearing long weaves. He didn't drop a compliment even when i got alot of those from colleagues at work or even his friends.
He was absent. Silent. And that killed me. In the most unbearable way possible.
Her name was Sharon. He spent alot of time with her and when he was with me he spent it texting her.
He noticed everything about her.
Today he was texting her again. I was writing in journal. Something I began doing alot since the silence in the apartment seemed to be eating me up from the inside.
"What are you always writing in that your dumb book?" He asked uninterested,  taking me by surprise regardless.
I held out my open diary and he read out the words that have been fighting with my lips to be voiced out.
"I hope for a day that I would write and my words would bewitch you, hold you down like a spell, make you mine. I hope for a day you wouldn't want to leave, not for her big tits or her light skin. I hope for a day your soul would be fettered to mine, bound in deep devotion, blood vessels entwined together, destinies merged. I hope for a day that I wouldn't have to need you, because you would be mine. I hope for a day your silence wouldn't make my heart palpitate and leave me broken, struggling to breathe, struggling to live."
The look in his eyes told me I was late. That he had left a long time ago.
I took my book and started scribbling again.
"Where do heart breakers burn? They steal souls, making living impossible. Living will feel disorienting, like wearing a shirt inside out. It is like murder. And murderers burn."

Thursday 12 March 2015

12.03.2015

You always wanted to give up on love, you really wanted to. You gave yourself shrink worthy advice while facing the mirror, giving yourself reasons to move on, to leave him behind. You told yourself you would be better alone, or did you actually say you wanted to be alone. I mean I understand, after being with such an asshole you needed to say those words, those empty promises to yourself. You knew inside you were crumbling, bone crashing on top another, muscles melting into water. You strutted out that day both determined and afraid. Ready to be the new you, empowered and intelligent enough, enough not to go back to her former mistakes. But you were more afraid.
Maybe because your mistake was 6 feet, lean muscled, fine chiseled face structured, with extraordinary eyes that stripped you bare and made your strength buckle so easily. Your mistake was your first love and he did not even have to look at you for you to remember yourself, shy and ignorant while he ravaged you through pain to pleasure. Nights where he loved you senseless till each part of your body knew him well enough to respond, tingling when you sensed his presence in a room. Love making so passionate that you had accepted it was impossible getting over that.
You were always too intense, frightening in the way you wanted him, unashamed and sacrificial. Needing him even on nights he was busy needing another. You were too busy waiting for him to call to have a life, too busy making him happy to make yourself happy. Your friends tell you no man can live up to the one who lives in your head, but you found him, only that he did not find you, you were there but he wasn't. You wanted him around so you closed your mouth more, never complained when he treated you less than the woman that you are. You settled on being soft and understanding, or foolish, isn't that the word for it? You wanted to be prettier like the girls he paid more attention to, tried putting on some make up, saving up money for that soft full weave with bouncy curls. You fantasied his fingers running through those curls while he fucked you. But you only lost him and yourself. You could not make him love you, you built a home full of memories with him, Memories where he was someone else, loving you like he should, before everything changed. Memories that made the thought of leaving unbearable.


Thursday 12 February 2015

Ceremonies.

Is there a particular moment we begin spiraling down the bottom? I used to wonder if life snapped in clean halves bending at the exact moment when we departed from who we could justify into something strange and inexcusable.
The question of when everything started to fall apart hunts me, sleepless nights spent weighing each memory with significance like a weary detective obsessing over a timeline. Trying to discover the exact moment the house in Shomolu started to collapse, how long had it been? Were the foundations trembling the day papa talked about his new wife? The day we discovered Eka, the help next door was pregnant?
Mama said she felt when it happened, the Sunday the walls of the apartment caved in. The things we left behind, my dark doll with the green shoes, the dress with pink flowers, the chance of goodbyes we didn’t have. My parents never let me visit the ruin.
Maybe it was the day thick strands of hair fell on the marble floor of my room. I stood staring in the mirror, gripping the scissors a little too tight. It started with what was maybe an inch, a little trim, and then a couple of inches till there was barely anything left. Staring in the mirror, then at the comb, at hair on the floor, it’s been 7 years since her last haircut and 7 hours since a steam. The scissors had always been lying there rarely ever used.

Sometimes I hoped just as people faded away, memories of them would leave too, but they keep hovering, mists of confusion, making you hold on to nothing, leaving you struggling to move on. Time had a way of transforming Jade from that geeky timid child in nursery school whom she shared her cakes with to six feet with lean muscles who she day dreamt of sharing more than her cakes with. If love was laughing at his jokes and looking to him for agreement in a delicate and unspoken way. If love was holding hands in public places and kissing in school corridors. If love was moaning his name while grabbing a fist full of his thick black afro hair while he kissed her breasts. If love was wriggling in pleasure with her dress rolled up and shifted aside while he touched her warm skin. If love was a confused girl giving into a new strange graveness, a weak imitation of what she imagined love making to be and the moment being just as wonderful because of the strong weakening feeling she had for him. Then love was what destroyed her, like her mother, she felt it happen,  the growing distance,  his muffled one word responses, the deafening silence till she saw him holding her and whispering intimately in her ears. It had been two months since then,  he didn't even say goodbye, and she lived everyday in a new pain, holding onto her pillow and crying and begging herself to forget him. Somehow her life had evolved around him that her life before him seemed like a blur of events. She looked at herself or what seemed to be the version of her that existed, gripping the bottle of Tylenol she had kept hidden under her clothes for the past 5 days. She swallowed the first red five pills first, she had read online that a mere overdose could damage the liver and lead to death. She poured out a handful this time, not bothering to count how many and swallowed them. Waves of nausea hit her, somehow she felt a certain peace,  she didn't feel her pain as she lid into unconsciousness.
There are events that demand a certain ritual, a rite where you lose yourself to your pain, where you float like the lifeless leaves that have been dried up in the heat of the sun.

Tuesday 3 February 2015

Adulthood and Absences.

My youth held nothing but the relentless struggle to be accepted by society, to be loved by someone and to be approved by my parents and myself, for I set the highest expectations for myself not them. My youth held a certain emptiness of a vast space where excitement and passion used to be. Each day started with a deep longing for something different and an overwhelming sense of tiredness from being bored of my routine life. Growing up closed me off from the world and my fears multiplied their numbers because understanding how cruel people could be would do that to you. Because I missed being care free and ignorant, I missed trusting and loving people blindly, I missed the uncomplicated innocent life of my childhood.

Because when I think of my life and the time I had been most alive, I think of when I was 3, running around our family house butt naked with my sister, laughing and screaming.

Because when I think of my life and when I had been most alive, I think of when I was 5, playing hide and seek with my siblings and my cousins, hiding in the most obvious places and being genuinely surprised when we got found.

Because when I think of when I was most alive I think of when I was 7, and I wandered away from school, negligent of the danger of my actions, wandering curiously on unfamiliar streets and wandering away farther without worrying about the fact I didn't know how to retrace my steps back. Looking at my dad's teary eyes with my questioning ones when he found me later that evening, unaware of the nightmare I had caused my parents.

Because when I think of my life and when I had been most alive I think of when I was 13 and I had my first crush. Of how it didn't matter that he didn't know who I was and how I felt. But all that mattered was the dizzying flutter in my chest and the butterflies in my tummy whenever I saw him.

Because when I think of my life and when I had been most alive I think of my first kiss, from a guy I didn't even love, a guy that bullied me for my lunch cakes, a guy that teased me every chance he got. But he held me and took my lips with his and in those brief seconds,  the confusion,  the blood rush and the many other things I felt and didn't understand had me smiling to myself later that night while replaying the event in my head.

Because when I think of my life and when I had been most alive I remember being laid on his bed, stripped of my dress and lace panties,  having my legs spread apart and cold jelly poured around the lower part of my tummy down the vee of my legs. I remember his warm tongue loving me, kissing and licking. And how I couldn't breathe from the intoxicating feeling and the blinding pleasure. How my body kept convulsing, responding to his tongue.
I remember those years and I feel empty, how becoming an adult took all of that away. How growing up created one absence after another and all I'm doing is struggling to deal.

Tuesday 27 January 2015

27.01.2015

Too often words are not enough. To express what you feel and how you feel it.

How do you tell someone that you're burning for him? That he owns your heart?

What if those words are still not enough?

This is something more than words. He was something she couldn't recover from.

Even now he's miles away, she could feel his love holding her like the skies hold the sun and the stars and the moon, embracing her very being, making her warm.

She was unsure of the next minute or tomorrow or the future but she loved him so much it hurt. And in this moment he loved her too and that was all she needed. It was her truth. 

Monday 12 January 2015

Miracle hungry Christians and Thieving Pastors

"Write an amount, the kind of amount you would like to receive from God."
I stared at the cheque book I had just brought  out from my suitcase. I would give half of what I own. That should be enough.
The pastor was speaking in tongues now. Then he said again, "Try God and see. Brethren, give Him 24 hours and He will surprise you."
The crowded roared "AMEN", busy stuffing money in envelopes and writing down in their cheque books like I was about to.
The title of the sermon was "24 hour miracle" and Pastor Nicholas was the guest speaker today. Our pastor, Pastor Clement was behind, eyes closed, vibrating in prayer.
Pastor Nicholas was still speaking, "Give him a 100 thousand and he would give you two hundred thousand, give him five hundred thousand and he will give you a million, give him a million and he would make you a billionare... (more speaking in tongues)"
Somehow I felt I should do better than giving God half, I was going to give him everything,  after all I would become a billionare in just 24 hours. So I gave.
We all congratulated each other and danced in thanksgiving and some even gave testimonies in advance. Then the service was over and I went home.
I went home and waited for my miracle. No call. No alert. No visit from the angel who would mysteriously give me my billions.  I looked at the time nervous. And checked my phone maybe it was the network acting up. I strolled out to the nearest atm to check my balance. I struggled to breathe easily.  Nothing. Maybe the 24 hours was to start after that day. I went back home with a strong sick feeling in the pit of my belly.
The next day went by, that week went by, and nothing still. I summoned courage to go to the church and request for how to locate Pastor Nicholas.
He had left the country and Pastor Clement had been unavailable since Sunday.
I was in a lot of trouble. I called my mom.
She was in my house that evening screaming and shaking her head, looking into nothing saying repeatedly, "I have raised a fool"
I was dumb unable to find words to comfort her or myself. I just stood there, feeling really sick in my stomach.