Pascal always walks us to the junction after we visit. Outside is an after-rain kind of dark. The heavens are  a thick blue canvas spread so low as to make rooftops resemble scraps of paper collaged into a humongous mosaic. Brown puddles dot the streets; some barely the size of a grown man's foot, others the width of a small lagoon. We have to dodge and leap over their welcoming watery arms, like Another time Sis.  The barbing Saloon less than ten feet away from Pascal's is jamming up Olamide's issa goal on its speaker and the thing is so noisy that the provisions store next to it is practically shivering, tremors from the stereo's bass pulsate up and down its walls. It reminds me of another day, acutely similar to this one, with a little less downpour and clearer clouds. We were doing our usually walk home at turtle pace when the world started to scream. "Goal!"From taxi cabs, stalls, bars; Gee even the mechanic at the corner of the road

There are countless silences, all noisy in their own manner. There is the silence that speaks when spoken to, and broods when not. There's the silence that walks with weariness in its gait, the one that fatigue has robbed of it's virtue. There's the silence that bellows when anger smithed words will not suffice. The silence that seethes and bristles at the back of our minds. Then there is the silence that visits us when words are not enough to say. When the world is but a forgotten stepping stone, and we are all that matters. When i am listening to the tune of your voice plucking the strings of my heart and all i can breathe is you. I like that comfortable quiet that sneaks in upon us in a murmur of solace, that quiet that requires two to make. That is my favourite kind silence. I found that silences talk, and that they are loud, and opinionated.I learnt that silences say more than words ever speak

Trouble is not anosmic as you would think. Trouble stinks, with a fetid aroma like sulphur roasting a corpse. My nose has been trained to seek it out since the day a lorry tried to put its metal rib cage straight through Mum and I, since the day i woke up in n a hospital bed with an inferno in my lungs and lead flowing in my veins. I got to school late, as usual. If i was a junior i believe my life right at this point will be one full of frog jumps and kneeling out in the open for hours, the sun in my face. I've been there and done all of that, enough for five life times. I waltz into the class like a princess from some fairy tale story. Welcome to the benefits of being in SS3. You are a student and at the same time, you're not. Check this; you could put a javelin through the white marker board and get a pat on the shoulder as punishment, but God help you, you dare staff. You'll be handled like a terrorist. No lie. And trust when i say it's neither a Queen'

An A-list artiste's concert wouldn't be this roof raising. 'Roof raising' is a simple way to describe it. They are making serious attempts to set the roof ablaze and gas up the naked night sky. I meet Pascal at the gate post where he's turning his pockets inside out, looking for money to pay off the kekenape that dropped him. Hippie red, blue and pink glowing from the tricycle's headlamps wash him in fluctuating rainbow colours that make his deep brown skin brown-emerald one second, and brownish indigo the next. He spots me and hollers my name. I wave back and go on to meet him. He wraps me up in an embrace worthy of a grizzly bear, for like the six thousandth time since I met him. Boy sure likes his hugs. "Hey are you wearing make-up?" He sounds suprised that I would. "No." I lie smoothly "I'm not. Why?" "I swear it looks like you are." He squints at my features, I smirk up at him. "Ha! I knew you were wearing make up

"Ello bae" Abe drawls when i get to them. Then he does a double take and goes "Ummm, Bae where have you been hiding all that fine-ness". Somebody hold this boy, pls. I sure am glad that i decided to bring my jacket along, because it seems like the only thing preventing him from biting me. Chantelle shoves him with her free arm and he goes tumbling back, snickering the whole way. And there is Chideziri, standing in the doorway. Chideziri letting the bulb's glower roll off him in waves of crimson.  The colours and the noise can consume every one, except him. Chideziri making the moment seem a lot more worth living in. He asks Abe smoothly, in an extra nice voice "Where do you want your teeth, on the floor?  Or in your cup?" He sounds like he's only half joking. Abe's grin is smug."Those are options A and B, what option says none of the above?""None"He glares at Abe for a moment, then dis