Find me in the place where the noise from the world comes to a hush, or a whisper, where it feels like the only truth you’d find is the one that is.
“What if I don’t want to find you?” I ask and he smiles.
“I knew you would ask that, you question everything Dee, and it is great if only you would stop to listen to answers you receive. Find me Dee.”
I shake my head and continue writing the dialogue I was working on. It’s the next book I hope to publish and everything about the lead character evades me. He knows I’m in my world and so he walks away.
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I know how many steps he takes to the door before he stops because I count when he’s not listening. How odd it is that he asks of me what he knows I would not provide.
Apples.
I suddenly want to eat three apples- something red and crunchy and healthy…and what’s in my house is an endless supply of tea bags, sugar, water and two oranges.
He calls me, “Dee…” and I look up at him and he says “stay safe!” I nod and smile and tell him “you too.” What hurts is knowing he will drown himself in another bottle of whisky thinking he can have and destroy what he has at will.
The ones that make you smile, that make you say “I’m fine,” when you are not.
I know a couple of things about you,
The kind of things I wish I never knew,
Like how you smile in between kisses,
Like how you cannot part with a cigarette, not even to share a puff with a stranger.
Like how you wish your Mother stayed a little longer, loved you a little harder,
Like how you see the world in numbers, and yes, you can multiply complex numbers without using a calculator.
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I know a couple of things about you,
The kind of things we wish the world never knew,
Like how many times you’ve wounded me,
Like how easy it is for you to find warmth in another, yet your heart beats only for me…
An addiction for the feminine body is what you called it,
Stardust, how easy it is for you to self-destruct, my love.
I know a couple of things about you,
The kind of things that only my soul can speak of, a galaxy of its own, an ember unknown.
I know a couple of things about you Stardust and I won’t wait for my being to define it, so I’ll leave this here…another breadcrumb which I hope you’ll nibble on as you make your way home.
You ask…four words, yet upon them hang the weight of a memory, a single occurrence, a thought.
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I do what I do best…I smile and shrug my shoulders and look away.
We’ve been here Stardust.
You seek atonement, I seek freedom.
Release me Stardust, and, you may just find yourself.
The waiter sets a glass of milkshake before me and a cup of black coffee before you.
How is it that you stir your coffee anti-clockwise?
I am here Stardust. I see you and I love this new found space, this new understanding of how flawed you are and that you are embracing every bit of it.
You are wounded Stardust.
I do not care, not particularly. I am astounded at how you choose to beat yourself up for being human…so I am not angry anymore, anger is expensive.
I come to you like a field of never ending scent that assails your nostrils.
You wander to worlds beyond whenever you behold my countenance.
It’s how you utter these words, like they’re the air you breathe…
It’s how you utter gold and act like dust that astounds me.
One hails from the other, but it’s value is placed higher than that which it hails from.
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I am Lavender, you say…
You want to soak me up, to relish in the presence I offer,
You want to devour me, as much as you can, for though I am Lavender,
I am the wind, I slip through your fingers even when you were unaware of my presence.
So, you churn these thoughts in your mind,
You say and do as you please,
You love and have as much as you can and flee,
Never staying long enough to receive the love you’d given.
It’s you that’s Lavender, it’s you that fills up a room with your scent and leave long before it fills up our nostrils.
It’s you that flees, a gentle breeze like the wind, a benign thought…a soul wandering the realms of this earth, unaware of how much love he’d get if only he stood still.
You once asked me, “where do you go to when you hurt?”
I smiled, a reflex, so in tune with my soul that you almost wept.
Stardust, in these echoes of silence, I travel worlds unknown to me.
You once introduced me to your friend as a ‘Vintage Soul.”
Did you mean it?
I truly wish you did for what do you say when you have no words left.
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What do you shed when you have no more tears…or do you will yourself to shed many more, until your ducts are dry and withered…Stardust,
I choose to bleed on paper.
I wrote you a letter, did I ever tell you? No.
I did, I truly did and now, I find myself taking a step back, and another, and another…finding my way to the one place where I was wounded, because until I face that pain, I’ll be residing in Castles with you, smiling while resenting every bit of you.
And you…Stardust a child of the earth, you deserve better, and so do I.
I press the snooze button on my alarm five times every morning.
I set my phone on airplane mode so I can listen to my playlist every morning to work.
My playlist lasts fifty-three minutes and twenty seven seconds.
I smile, wave, shake hands and ask questions whose answers are of no importance to me like “how’s your family doing?” “what did you do over the weekend?”
I always get endless answers and stories that involve liquor especially on the weekend question.
Half of the staff here are married with kids and half of them spend weekends with other young women who keep quiet when their wives call.
My judgement meter was so loud the first time I joined them for the staff dinner,
But since then I’m amused and intrigued at how a man would roll his tongue, pepper his actions with a lie and everyone around him would nod in agreement, like he’d decreed the truth, “it’s what a man does.”
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So, patch me up will you?
Send me on a girls only trip to Mombasa, let me eat bhajias, kashatas, kokotos and fried potatoes for a week!
Surround me with feminine laughter…an endless joy, a certain softness that illuminates the soul when we are not being held down by society.
Oh, you should be married by now, why aren’t you?
Don’t you want kids?
Hey, at your age, you cannot have kids…they’ll not be normal you know because your eggs have expired.
Wait, what? Why are you single? See, if I hadn’t met my wife, I would marry you, spend the night with me.
Why are you not married? What are you waiting for?
Are you those bitter women trying to be like us men? You know the, ones who call themselves feminists?
Patch me up, will you?
Sew me here…right where my anger and disgust rises on the surface of my skin.
Powder me cocoa because my skin is the night, my heart troubled by the perception of love sold unto me by the books I devour, music I listen to and movies I reluctantly watch.
Drink me like scotch…throw in three ice-cubes and wash me down your throat as Femi Kuti serenades you.
Okay, patch me up real quick, if you cannot handle scotch, then throw me down your throat like Tequila! One quick shot and you stick your tongue out, aahh! and then tell the bartender…another one! You do so because you can never just have one shot of Tequila!
“Get married, settle down…come on, why don’t you want to settle down?”
A thought, a five second rant that involves not signing up for something that I do not believe in anymore plays in my head and I smile at him…watch the girl on his lap and finally say “I do not wish to be like your wife who worries every Friday and the whole weekend which woman you’re buried inside, relishing pleasure, servicing STDs and then going home to her, telling the world you love her.”
I press the snooze button on my alarm five times every morning.
I set my phone on airplane mode so I can listen to my playlist every morning to work.
My playlist lasts fifty-three minutes and twenty seven seconds.
No one invites me to their end of week nights out and my soul sings and dances at this new development…for my judgement meter is not activated and I can stay home, read a book, or go sight seeing around the islands.
Patch me up, will you…these holes in my perception of love, these wide windows and cracks in my thinking that are tested over time…make them go away,
Patch me up real quick…or if you cannot, consider me the soul that’ll wander, an old soul, traveling across worlds, reaching out to no one for the price I’ve paid for solitude is too high to compromise for a minute of fun.
Patch me, but if you cannot, send me some salve…something for the wounds that I cannot heal, for the tears I never shed that still drip salt onto those wounds the world does not see.
Patch me up…for I’ve always loved a quilt…every piece is different, but boy does it look good all together.
“You can take the children for a while and spend time with them,” said Maureen.
“I live in a one bedroom apartment. You’ve seen it and it is not the kind of place they would enjoy playing around and all that.”
“They are kids. They only care about the attention you give them besides, you will get this job and that means you’ll have a better place if you so wish.”
“Maybe…”
“Belinda, can I ask you something?”
“Yes, what is it?”
“Have you thought of going back to your house?”
“You mean the house?”
“Yes, I am talking about the house where Jeff and your kids live in. It’s the house you left and haven’t been sleeping in for the past one month. It’s the house that your kids call home and where their school bus knows to stop every morning and evening. Do you need me to clarify some more?”
“No, I know what you are talking about. I am not ready to go there.”
“What about Jeff?”
“I am not ready to talk to him. I know I was hard on you at first about Michelle, but there are many more women like her out there. It’s Michelle this time but there have been others and the more I act like a fool, the more I feel hurt. Look, if there is one thing I have learned over the years, it’s that there’s more to life than playing the perfect wife. I always thought that if I took care of everything at home then it will be great. It was for a while and then he started acting different and I started asking myself questions. I got what I was looking for and now…just don’t get into something and forget yourself Mesh, no one’s ever worth all that loss and pain.”
“You need to sort things out with Jeff.”
“Wait, are you telling me that I should forgive and forget?”
“Ehe! Yes, that’s what I am saying. Before you start lecturing me again, hear me out. Listen, you need to iron things out with your husband. You chose to stay away from him and it’s reminded you that you can always get up when you fall down. You did not take his money or live under his shelter but you managed and he knows that, in fact, it probably scares him that you could walk away. All, I am saying is that you need to talk to him, yell at him or something, just to get everything off your chest and after that, you can decide what course of action to take.”
“Where is this sudden enlightenment coming from?”
“I have been reading this book by some woman in America. You know the divorce rate is pretty high there and their courts make more money settling divorce cases and all that. She talks about ‘the hurt you give’ in one of her many chapters about healing. I just tried it out on you and it seems to have worked.”
“Can I read the book once you’re done?”
“I can send it to you via whatsapp!”
“It’s a pirated book! Mesh, now you are hurting the woman’s efforts, just give me the title of the book and I will go and look for it.”
“I forgot I was talking to Saint Belinda. You need to go out, get drunk and wake up with a hangover or something.”
“There’s no way I’m going out with you Mesh. I’m too old for the club scene.”
“I know this rich friend of mine who knows how to have a good time. I’ll call her and make plans this Friday, and while we are talking about going out. Okwan is not invited. I like her, but she’s way too off in my squad.”
“You’re mean. How about we invite her and let her decide whether she’d love to come or not?”
He found his way home at 6:00 o’clock in the morning. He went straight to the bathroom, turned on the shower and stayed there until he heard the front door being shut.
It was the eighth time he’d done just that.
She was not counting, but who knew that every time he did it, her heart broke, a dimming of a light that wanted to shine bright. She would get to work, put on her smile and attend to clients all day. He would text once or call sometime towards the evening, “I’ll be working late.”
She would ask herself, “Working on who?” but would simply text back or answer “It’s okay love.”
Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love. Love.
She said it for every time he came home late…she would say it to herself, not to him, he did not deserve to see her break.
When she asked her friends for advice, some shook their head and then continued chatting on their phones and taking selfies. Some friends pitied her while others told her to hang in there. He was going through something and if she butted in, he would not resolve it. “If your man wants space, give it to him, or else you’ll lose him.”
So, she sat on her desk, called the florist outside their office building and asked him to wrap two roses…in brown wrapping and deliver them to his office…
nilichoandika 