Closure

It was my birthday a few weeks ago, and what should have been a routine, barely noticeable bump on the flat line that has become the ultra predictable, safety first, thirty-something year old life that is my lot somehow morphed into a swirling mess of mildly depressive emotions. The trigger was an epiphany of sorts, one that I had no business having. If having that epiphany was odd, where it hit was even odder - midway through my morning ablutions, just before the commode gave way to a four minute duel with sensodyne and a power toothbrush. Leading up to it, I was stoking along nicely, keeping up with my annual birthday ritual - deactivating my facebook account, turning off all but my private phone and lobbing a text message in the direction of the one friend I know whose birthday is in the same week as mine. ...

Sometime between sending an SMS that went unanswered for very nearly a day and me slipping into one of my more pensive moments, something clicked in my head - TheB is not for me. My trip westward at the back end of last year had come at some personal cost. I had been invited for an interview at one of the Nigerian multi-nationals, and given the job description, it seemed a fairly reasonable job that fit in with my longer term life direction. I chose instead to head out to Chicago, prioritising clarity around my situation with TheB higher than snagging a dream Nigerian job. Unfortunately my nervousness and her busy-ness ended up putting paid to any serious conversations. ...

For the beautiful ones who almost were… We may never ever again be the way we once were. We may no longer dance the cha-cha and sip palm wine in the shade of the coconut palms as Coltrane serenades and the sea breezes ripple through the flimsy thatch that breaks the fall of the gently falling rain. We may now never know the blessing of the Old Man’s Libation, or see his scrawny fingers split the kola nut or the unerring aim of the red spittle from his toothless gums ...

August 2010 to April 2011 Word for word, We beat the love Out of each other * Like hammer - Blows crack rock, And water- Wears granite Smooth- Day by day, Our rage poisons- Everything. Memory is - A wound kept raw; closure is An uncertain salve. The End. Sigh *Line shamelessly purloined from Yousef Komunyakaa’s Once the Dream Begins.