As though you know my fear, how it crackles in my bones. you short circuit the panic.
I did the numbers. I don’t have a lot of people I count on. But you stretch into K. Constant as daybreak. All these years, I have made mistakes. They all crescendo, discordant and jarring. You teach me to face the music. I take notes. Then I take care, because the world might take me if I don’t put my footsteps in your footprints.

I have had to learn, while you shadow me, to grow out of your penumbra. To shape my silhouette into father figure, just like you. You make it easy for me. I can make mistakes & they will not grow to dwarf me. You give me the grace to stumble & stagger back into frame. Back into posture. You nod to me, a knowing gesture. Like you’ve seen my future, and in it I am outlined better. My edges are so defined to be altogether palpable. I bloom. Because of you, I bloom.

Now we stare irony in the face, as bellies swell with the inflation. We are under the stars, I and the loves of my life. The chatter is so mundane to be such magic. But I feel it crawling down my collarbone. We have loved with everything we had, and we love still with the crumbs.

In the noisy content, I can taste joy brushing across my upper lip. The season is so hot and so cold, like my family; my mother, a cauldron of us, sharing herself, unequal portions. Above, fireworks roar into the sky, multicolored sound. We barely raise our heads. The wonder is here. What is this thing, sizzling in our proximity? Why do I beam at nothing? When you hug me, it fits like a clasp. Why do I feel like you’re all I have?

Tomorrow is boxing day, and I’ll wrap a duvet around myself: a gift to my bed. You’re so warm you thaw my insomnia. I thank you. Because of you, your daughter is quick to laughter. Her paper Christmas trees litter the balcony. It is funny. I paint in a mistletoe. It ripens in the presence of your light. I gasp, breaking the silence. You don’t know about the things easing in my chest, the loudness shushing in my ears.

You don’t know.

Blessed be the leaf, in its fierce independence of taste, and survival skills, waterlogged and drowning, yet overpowering the water leaf. Survival skills, the afang is in diaspora, overpriced in Lagos bukkas, microwaved and frozen, but the afang only dances to its chosen.

The afang is known for its bigotry, responding only to the caresses of the thick Akwa Ibom mother of two, who doesn’t only cook for two.

Now you may bring other instances, but true afang never forgets its roots. I enter the delicacy through its roots, to find the origin of taste. I sigh in satisfaction, mouthing a prayer to the emptiness:
May God bless empty bellies and the hands that keep them full.

Sensitive eyes.

I have not known love to fist to a punch. To build a bonfire in an artery. I have not known it to gaslight, and pull faults from the whorls of his palm — everything is backhanded; apologies, and what she gets if she doesn’t accept it.
In all of this, he says she made him do it. That his violence is a byproduct of her... being. There is something about her that reminds him of creation story. It is why he always goes for the ribs.

But if you’ve ever bloodied a journal entry, dedicated your empty heart to full rage, ever used spirits for broken skin, or halfway forgot your name, loved a beast entire, and had to watch for sudden movements from the corner of your blackeye, if you’ve ever been so hurt you wished you would d!e, ever been punching bag for insecure hands, and now you cannot hang on anymore;
It’s not your fault. You only deserve a kind touch & flowers for your barren heart. You need time, for your broken to heal at the cracks. To heal at the sadness. I am sorry. You are so brave.

In the eternal night, I writhe beneath moonshine, I am ethereal blue, shimmering ghostlike. I turn upside, to stare at the stars. They flicker, like neon signs, like winks from the thousand-eyes of the sky.

It is three in the morning. I am awake in a dark room, invisible in the blackening. I rest my eyelids. It is so comforting, shielded from the light. I am nameless, no one. I melt into my sheets. Insignificant and unclad, wreathed in shadow. I paw at the insomnia clinging to my iris. It is routine, to find sleep in the darkness.

But it is dark. Sleep is pretty hard to find. I duet with crickets. All these lonely nights I have made friends. They come to my bedside, eager for song, for worship. In the darkness I have resurrected religion. And we chant for the sun. We chant for the morn. It is so quiet. But we hammer at the silence until day breaks. Then I go about my day, eager for the day’s end. Eager to return to the darkness.

Before anything else, your body first loved. Proximity digging into the pit of your stomach, your body pushed and shoved, and fell. You fell. I don’t think you care so much for happiness if you’re still here. But I understand. He stared at you. You defied gravity, and there is no common sense to it. But that’s the point of it.

There is no point to it. It is all a mindless madness. How I learned the contours of your silhouette by accident. I can pick you out in shadow. It’s the little things. Come sit with me. Just sit, and nothing else. Let me learn the shape of your fragrance. Let it cling to me, a sliver of you. My eyes slither on you, and you must read the promise there.

Say, will you kiss me tongue-tied? I have been eating all the words in my mouth, trying to fight my hunger for you. I am trying to stretch your attraction to me. I have even been going to the gym, only for you to kiss me weightless.

Sigh.

You say, I write about love so well. But I am speaking our story into existence. I talk about having crushes, but they sound too much like you. We’re just friends. But when we sleep in the same bed I find my dream girl. Some days I could swear I have loved every iteration of you, even when you reincarnated as a star, I loved you until supernova. Until suspense. Until you don’t text, or call back. But I have had practice. I have had people die on me. I know how to talk to ghosts.

“you believe the devil more than you do your tailor.”

But that is corny.

I go to owambes for the life of the party, pulsing at the center. I walk into their halls, pausing at the center, to feel all the lights on me. And it isn’t just me.

Here, any one decently dressed is dripping main character. Day of the jackal. I shoot my shot from miles away, at the girl in aso ebi. I smile, as she winks. I understand it now. I’m in. The music is so loud, I am in the vein of the speakers, and this is its pulsing. On the big stage, two people are tying the knot. The food is untying knots in my belly. All around me there is laughter. Apparently, there’s more to life than happily ever after.
It is only natural to pair drum beats and drumsticks, and high heels & high life.
It’s the love of the party. The people, they all love the party. And they will be elsewhere next week, vampire-hungry for the life of the party.

is water-logged
with disease, that takes its pick of the middle ages,
cardiovascular pestilence/

your blood has gone beyond fist bumps/
to pumping up a war song, but no pressure/ there is pressure; your heart just beat a world record/ and you look back in time, for ward records where the pestilence

first appeared in your family line; grandma, her nerves split in two from a stroke/how she gave her heart to you, until it gave out/and now when the sun is high, mama makes you stay at home/ to keep you from the pestilence that walketh at noon.

Too many things ask for my voice. I haven’t used it in so long, my throat is raw. It is 9 on the clock. Today is pouring from my wrist into a journal.

I say, I have never written about trees and our oxygen symbiosis. I am not about to start now. But this afternoon after the wind, I watched dying leaves drift slowly to the ground. It felt too much like me, only, I am still mid-air. I am trying to understand, how this too can be existentialist. An orchestra of birds muttering avespeak. I looked up that tree to face the music. I could almost feel the green seeping into me, clear as glacier water. I shiver, suddenly infinitesimal. Like the world has stretched to its full height.

It is nighttime. My small town is alive in flame. A new landowner needs space. I run back to that tree, to see it burning, drawing its branches into itself. My belly contracts to the size of an ache. I am losing my breath, as it exchanges oxygen for smoke. I witness the unraveling of photosynthesis. I fall with the leaves. I lose consciousness.

From my room, I stare as the world heaves a sigh. In my compound, the palm tree catches a draft of that exhale, and sways, and sways.

If I am sentimental, it looks like dancing. Like carefree joy is visiting my doors again. Like I don’t need walls again. I can smile at you. When I do, I soften like a plant. I root for you. I will not let sorrow grow into my face. Or acne.

I leave it with yesterday, for time to band-aid the bad days. I could have parfait, for days I get shakes, and existential panic.

I am simply here, gathering wonder. I feel a nimbus growing into my shoulder. Baby steps. I am trying to say, I am not fine. I am trying to say, yesterday still bores into my back. But I am swaying in the wind. I am dancing a jig. I am slowly getting a grip. I am so close.