The blind perspective
It was easy for the news to spread like wildfire. After all, I couldn’t really hide my disgrace; it was made evident by the bump on my stomach. I was a nineteen-year-old about to give birth to a bastard child in a community where no one tolerated immorality. Yes, no one tolerated it but they all partook of it. Hypocrites, that is exactly what they were. A community of hypocrites!
I’ve been sitting here long enough to gather dust, shutting up, minding my business, waiting along with the rest of my damn country for Burna to land a hat trick with African Giant so we can call it a day and bully everything else off the top 10’s for a couple of months, maybe forever, I don’t make the rules.
I dipped my finger in the holy water at the entrance, it simmered. Setting foot in Church for the first time in eight years, I burst into flames. Ash like acid rain fell, ageing the Chapel’s floorboards – I ebbed into a smoulder making my way to the altar. I sat front row, a glowing splint, hanging to the pew, sins of the world hanging from my neck.
When your father sits you down to talk about rape, lend him your ears. Offer him your understanding. Pay attention to the confusion in his eyes, seek to unravel it. When he tells you of his childhood, and the stories of his late-blooming, of how he was bigger than his peers, never forget that he was still nothing more than a child. When he tells you of the temptations of free meals and late afternoon errands, listen attentively to the quiver in his voice — for in there is the music of old pain he can yet not understand.
Of the 7 billion people on earth today, only two are perfectly capable of understanding these next few words. One of them will be blown away into the labyrinth of could haves and has beens and the other is You. If you’re still guessing what this is, it’s a suicide note. No, not mine but yours. Yours because when I’m done, you would have killed yourself on your altar of ignorance, probably by hanging yourself on your high horse of self-righteousness or drinking a chemical full of your own harmful tendencies!
I’m staring at the empty spot that used to be Freeman’s. The moon is out this night, sitting in the naked sky as if to bear us witness. I close my eyes again to think of him, the whole version of him, the version of him before his nakedness became a sport, the one where the reality of an impending end did not beat his penis into a vanishing nut. Instead, my mind is still stuck on the soot, the smoke, and the helplessness. I’ve not been able to see anything else since we left his body.
Hey, it’s me again, your mailbox must be full by now. The mail company thinks we’re in love but little do they know my letters are my epistles of pain. It’s been months since we went to ashes, burnt by the fire we started. At first,we were warned of our combustibility, but we boasted that when gasoline meets fire, the furnace remains unburnt. Now, I’m not so sure.
The chest that belonged to my grandmother sat on the table in front of me, the lawyer had left it there right after I signed off some papers. I was still amazed that this is all Granny could leave behind for me, but it had to be of some value to me. I put it […]