“you know i am a very private person.” i wonder a lot about you. reticent you are and i guess i allow it. i don’t make the rules here. you enjoy my company as i do yours but sometimes it’s as if we are different entities. i could swear to god we are plain old ocean at the heart of a desert. being with you gives me a torture one gets from pleasantries. you make me furious and you make me ecstatic, that can’t be right. and i want you, want you close, want you forever but you’re too much into games. i am not, unless if we’re talking the crying game by nicki minaj then i’m into games. write that down.

       “why are you so angry?” you smoulder away from me as silk does from fire. a neat bead it makes. the complete opposite of it reminds me of whatever it is i feel for you. who needs love when one can have a confusing mix of like, lust and love all at the goddamn same time? write that down.

         “you need to understand that i am different.” what is it with you? are we so disgusting with our monotonous ways, ways as sure as; breathing, blinking, a heart beat and a thought across the mind? you like being different and that is putting it mildly. you invented different, according to your mind. i have a news flash for you. we all are different in some way. and we all, desperately, want to be different. in worst cases we want to be especially special and different. it grants us some form of affluence to our emotional bank. write that down.

       “you like to believe you’re hard to read.” i am no different. it’s no doubt i scramble at the bottom of the barrel searching for myself. it’s desperate and it is pitiful. don’t get me wrong either, i have my issues but i’m not looking for bluest eyes and amber skin. to you i am a puzzle, and like you say, “a puzzle is a problem to be solved.” i think you think me one. and so i am putting words into your mouth, let me. you won’t tell me any different anyway. write that down.

         “let’s go toe to toe, bae.” you have a way of making me feel special and different. i slip into this cocoon until sleep catches up with me and i see a future for you and i where there’s none. thus my dreams turn into nightmares. that’s one other thing i do not believe in, nightmares. all dreams are thoughts and all thoughts are a reflection of a reality we have painted across this landscapes called life. did you know the thalamus relays sensory and motor signals to the cortex and is involved in regulating consciousness, sleep and alertness? so i don’t get nightmares over you, i see the truth of it. i ought to give a thank you to my watchman. write that down.

     “this has nothing to do with age.” you are well into your thirties and i am twenty years old. some may say i am wet behind the ears but it isn’t so. i read too much to be but then again jean louise finch was, as i am, plain old book smart. i know a lot but i don’t know you. we’ve been at this for two years now, on and off of course because having you for a still time isn’t possible. write that down.

     “i don’t like being predictable.” but you are predictable. what are you running from? or shall i ask what are you trying to avoid? monotony? i must say i have a great dispassion for it too but you taught me i have a greater hate for unpredictability. why? because you hide behind this when you don’t reply my texts or take my calls. i absolutely hate it. and no, you can’t say you were on your harley davidson and couldn’t answer. write that down.

     “if you don’t pick up my call once, twice, i stop calling.” i don’t think i can count on you in my greatest time of need. you might not answer my call or reply my texts at the time. actually, i don’t think i can count on you at all. remember that time i stripped stark naked before you and you put my clothes back on? i was embarrassed but today i am hurt. write that down.

       “i like to know a person real well before commiting myself.” you feel like window shopping. it’s great to do despite how tired it has me. then the day dreams come of having the very thing you desire until you’re stripped down by the thought that bloody hell, you can’t afford it and are nowhere near affording it. then you question yourself, in chagrin, why you do it all together. here, i blend in with the background. i am, as you say, normal. i am no different from the girls that infest this town. write that down.

you make me sing:

i don’t get it,

you like seeing me cry.

though my life will never be the same,

i’ll keep trying,

till i find my way home.

so just, release me now.[1]

i know you won’t. this is a pleasure for you, to see me cry and hurt. i believe it is. i believe i am a lab rat. i get it, i inspire you a number of times then i baffle you and so on and so on, and so third fucking on. write that down.

     “you know, i don’t believe most of the things you say.” you hurt me today when you said that. you’ve said it before but it didn’t hurt as much. in the now i have told you so much, just how much of it don’t you believe? when we lay side by side tired from the occasional sex we have, do you believe me then? when i come crying into your arms, do you believe me then, and when i am quiet, which i rarely am, do you believe me then? i made the mistake of telling you i love you, did you believe me then? the thought of the answer mars me the size of the sun. write that down.

       “why do you want to be with me?” the hurt i feel has traces of curiosity. i believe feelings are supposed to be absolute for them to be valid but i don’t understand why i’m curiously hurt. it’s almost as if being curious of blood in your pee when, in fact, you should be worried. you rob me of absolution or clear skies and bright stars. write that down.

“am i some kind of project to you?” you know what else has me curious, ceiling fans. i detest them a great deal. every time i see one i want to put my finger in between those blades. i know it’s stupid as much as it’s dangerous. i take it now you understand my predicament. i am not going to take this up the family tree and blame everyone. i am responsible for this. i am responsible for loving someone much older than me. then again this isn’t love. this is like, lust and love all mixed into one. i feel you feel nothing for me but curiosity. write that down.

you make me sing:

i don’t get it,

you never had my heart.

so just,

release me now.

“we don’t love with the heart, we love with our heads. the heart feels nothing, our thoughts are what we feel.” you taught me, what’s a heart for but to pump blood? you have my mind. you came in and opened the dusty windows to it and the sun rays came pouring in. then you opened the doors to let a clean cool wind rub against me and make me feel something else. you touch me something different. write that down.  

     “you are a beautiful person.” i don’t believe it. how am i to? how am i to believe it when you fracture me and go away without having a listen, without staying to at least help pick up the pieces you break? reminds me of that night when we had agreed to attend a poetry event together because you insist poetry is an art form. you never showed up. i remember texting you and you didn’t reply. i remember taking that long walk back home in the middle of the night because i was too broke to afford anything. that night, there was nothing but gray clouds and curtains of pouring rain in my mind. i sang heather headley’s i wish i wasn’t in love with you but i never could sing it to the end. write that down.

       “did you really write that note about your crush for me?” i stumbled on a poem one time. i have a curiosity as to why it engaged my mind because i am not all that into poems. i wrote it down and placed it in between the notes in my file because i want to stumble upon it, you know, coincidence. i keep moving it from time to time because, you know, unpredictable or is it unpredictably predictable? i can recite it by heart though some parts i do not understand. damn poets and their runaway thoughts. it is titled where we are and it reads:

are we not there yet?

this grumpy road that smoothens and roughens can’t really say.

it’s an unending curve with you,

a torture from pleasantries.

i can never see ahead.

 

anybody can be jealous.

i am as needy as a question

and you don’t understand intonation at all.

are we not there yet?

and your face draws blank spaces,

blank spaces i can’t erase

or write on.

your words, i need them.

 

we’ve already passed;

ten gas stations

one carnival

five cross roads

umpteenth villages and

one town and

we’re not there yet.

we’re still on this blinding curve.

 

are we not there yet?

at the mega city, the mecca city

of spiralling roads,

bright lights and

warm winds from the ocean…

you say nothing

and the road shows nothing.

you should have told me there is no destination.[2]

“what’s our destination?” the last line bites me the force of a crocodile or better yet a hippopotamus. i know this because once you took me on a trip up in kasane and to impress you i read about these animals so we could have something to talk about. like anything else in this our life it ends with the sourness of bile. when we arrived back home you took a shower with just water. my soap smells a little different from the one your wife knows. write that down.

     “i don’t like discussing people who are not present.” this is absolutely not about your wife and me. we aren’t a pair of shoes thus there is no need for me to put her and i side by side. this is about you and me and the things i say that you sometimes don’t believe. how can we be together then if this is the case? i fully understand that you’re your own man. i applaud you for that because people who belong to others have never belonged to themselves. so it is not about your wife or anyone you belong to. write that down.

           “i like to read before i fall asleep.” i look at you from across my bed. you’re engulfed in a book and i am reading sunday standard, folded over four times so it could fit my hand. this is our habit, to keep quiet when i am mad at you and when you find me too childish or too emotional to talk to. we read away from each other but in each other’s presence. so today i wonder about you, as i often do. write that down.

         “no two people are ever alike.” you remind me of someone. probably someone i should have met in the earliness of my life but never did. there is a ringing gong to your touch and your caressing words that ripples back to the warm clump of yesteryear when life sang in waves. when eyes weren’t as open and when even the thought of self wasn’t coherent. something about it screams protection and you see me for who i am. it’s sad that it comes in my life’s twilight but you make me feel like a little girl. it’s a pity you don’t want kids. i imagine you’d be a great father. to whom? i wonder. write that down.

“music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.” you make me sing:

                        “i’m-a stick around just a little while longer,

                        just to make sure that you’re really sure…

                        you like sleeping alone.

                        i’m-a stick around just a little while longer,

                        just to make sure that you’re really sure…

                        you like sleeping alone.”[3]

Copyright © F-K Omoregie/The Muse 2016

[1] Zonke. (2015). S.O.S Release Me. Work of Heart.

[2] The Muse. (2016). Where we are. You should have told me there is no destination.

[3] Rihanna. (2010). Complicated. Loud. Def Jam. SRP.