The first few moments of our lives can be very exhausting because we get to come out from the vagina of a woman while bearing in mind that we are connected to her by an umbilical cord. A month later, we start to get used to our environment. We start to ask ourselves why we are inside a house with people who we don't know anything about. A year later, we are forced to stand in front of a birthday cake with our fingers holding the tip of a knife. We smile, laugh and maybe cry as we watch unfamiliar faces raise their hands and clap for the little feat we have accomplished.
"He is one years old," Some of our mothers would say.
"She is one years old," others would say.
The first year of our lives starts with a positive outcome. By then, we are able to understand new things and we are able to perform new things. By then, we are able to understand that the person we have been taking milk from is our mother and the man
The purple clouds darted above my head as the bus stopped inside a park in Port-Harcourt. I was feeling dizzy but managed to follow the short line of people who were walking towards the door. Every individual who boarded the bus from Enugu to Port-Harcourt kept their eyes fixed on their luggages as if they were trying to guard it from being stolen. Uncle Max was doing the same. I wasn't. My mind was fixed on something else. Maybe because it felt strange to be visiting Port-Harcourt so soon even when I wasn't done with my WAEC exams!"Perer," Uncle Max muttered. "Do you want me to buy you a meat pie?""I am fine. Don't bother about making me feel happy.""I wasn't trying to make you feel better. I understand how hard it is to deal with the loss of a sibling. Believe me, Perer, I do understand how you feel.""Do you really understand what is going on in my mind now?""Yes I do. I honestl
It is two days now since Danny's body was placed below the ground. I still hear his voice wherever I go. It is as if he is trying to tell me something even though he knows I won't get the message because he is dead. I can't explain how I feel right now. Do I feel suicidal? No! Do I feel like living again? No! Do I feel like dying? No! I don't know how I feel but I do know that I feel empty. I do know I feel the same way that I felt when I heard that Clag was dead. Is it hard to feel death and yet pretend that it doesn't exists?I have been asking myself a lot of stupid questions today. Questions that doesn't makes sense at all but gives my dumb mind a sense of warmth. I asked myself why the sky was blue instead of green. I asked myself why we didn't have humans with green skin color. And in answer to that, I told myself that we have humans with green skin color but instead of us calling them humans we choose to call them aliens. Stupid right? Yes it is stupid but it does make
"How are you doing today? Are you feeling fine? Do you want some coffee or do you want Miss Bisi to make lunch for you?""I am fine, Uncle Max. I just need some space to breathe properly.""It has been two days now and you haven't said a word to me or Miss Bisi. It has been two days now and you have refused to answer your parents phone calls. It has been two days now and you have refused to eat any food or drink water. What is wrong with you, Perer?""Nothing is wrong with me, Uncle Max. I am just going through a hard time. It will pass immediately I get back on my feet.""And when will you get back on your feet?""I don't know, Uncle Max. Maybe two days or three days. I just want to be alone."Uncle Max took a deep breath as he sat down."Do you see what I have been passing through ever since his brother died?""I have two eyes," Miss Bisi was not in a rush to say anyth
Most of the times when I am in a bad mood and I talk, I spit out rubbish knowing fully well it will only worsen my condition. I have never really understood why people used to cut. It doesn't make sense to me at all when I start to imagine a human being sitting all alone in a dark corner, crying, holding a knife by his or her side and shredding his or her skin with the knife. I guess it feels good to cut sometimes. It takes away the pain you feel inside of you immediately your blood starts flowing away from your body. I guess it makes you to become more aware of how useless you are to the society you find yourself in.I know I will not grab a knife and cut my skin because I have tried to do it several times but can't get over the image of blood gushing out from my black skin. It terrifies me as much as running naked on a blind date. Even if no one is at home, I can't go to a secret corner, sit all alone and cut myself.
It took only a few days of mourning and thinking for the table in my room to become my favourite place to read. I rocked my head from left to right and then from right to left as I thought of my last WAEC exam paper. Geography was not really my best subject in school but I loved to learn about new places, countries and even about busy markets around the world. After a while, I got up to tear a sheet of paper from a new exercise book. Written at the back of the exercise book were the Nigerian National Pledge and a small mathematical table consisting of multiplications that ran from two to twelve. "Try again," I would say to Danny when he had mistakenly forgot to multiply in the right order. He would always frown then take a quick look at a similar exercise book with multiplication tables before trying again. Christle would sometimes join us for a minute or two, but she would tell us that she wasn't really good at math, and she would promise to try her best. We knew she wouldn't
My last exam paper was amazing. Yes! I am talking about my Geography paper. It was incredibly amazing. Though it was not the way that I imagined it to be but it was still amazing."We are finally done with secondary school," Goodness said as he took a pen and wrote something on my school uniform. "If you had not come to my house yesterday evening to seek my help on map reading, I doubt you would have been able to answer all those questions. They were really hard but incredible. Yes! Incredible is the right word. Those questions were incredible!""Why didn't you go for awesome instead of incredible?" I asked."Because I like incredible over awesome.""Does it have a special tag attached to it that I don't know about?""Come on man, it doesn't. I use awesome when the event that occurred is unpredictable. I use incredible when the event is both predictable and planned.""Incredible!" I yelled. "So, we are finally not going to be see
I don’t know how to describe the beginning of something. Maybe you could be able to describe the beginning of something without missing out in a lot of details. My inability to describe the beginning of something doesn’t mean that I can’t be helpful in a lot of areas. It is a known fact only to me that I could discern little or nothing while wearing a skimpy cloth that doesn’t fit properly to my body. I could lay down on a hard-narrow concrete road with snares of psychosis tangling me and still mot feel the effect of it until I wake up from my deep slumber. It is kind of funny that my imaginations don’t matches with a lot of people’s perspectives about imaginations but can I blame myself for being me? Can I blame myself for wanting to have my own unique personality instead of wearing someone’s own like an untouchable cloak?Sometimes I think about the dark and it scares me to know that I am not the
It was still noon and the dusty wind blew dead leaves that hugged my face. I am not talking about random hugs but real hugs. Hugs that touches the heart and reaches the darkest part of the soul. Do you understand how that feels?Today, I sat at a lonely corner with my palm below my chin. I was still thinking about Uncle Max relationship as I sat down. I was still thinking about Uncle Max relationship even when I bought some biscuits and ate it slowly. Today, I watched as men and women hastily walked with hasty feet and for a moment I stopped and stood like an iroko tree. I stood and watched men talk about a soccer game that ended with their favorite team losing. I stood and watched women talk about a man in the market who refused to give his daughter food although she was complaining bitterly that she was hungry.Today wasn't just like any other day. It drove me back to the days when all I had to think about was how to wake up and walk to school. The feelings of