Her name is Bae. And it’s not because she is Before. Anyone. Else, or because twice last night, she sent “I love you” on BBM and attached the besotted smiley. It is not because the year I read Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, I thought of her as Olanna, delicate, with the certain dainty notion that she was crafted to be watched over.

I thought of her as the faultless art works that hang on the polished walls of Freedom Park, ogled at by art lovers, reeking of seamless perfection, of absolute perfection and as the unspoiled apple lying in the lower column of the fridge in our Lagos apartment.

I thought of her as the little boy from Oko would think of airplanes, as something to be explored, to be studied and as the girl from Orlu thinks of the picture perfect Lagos in her Uncles stories, I thought of her as completion.

The last time we were together, she said, “I think I am starting to like Frank Ocean, weird, I know, but I prefer him to John Legend now.”

I had smiled and sung “Strawberry” for her, in my guttural voice she said reminded her of a thousand revving generators in Yaba when there was power failure and she had listened with fondness, as one donates a laugh to a humdrum joke told by his best friend.

When we were kids, we hand painted strawberries on a swing

Every moment was so precious then

I have loved the good times here

And I will miss our good times here

It is in this same vein that I look in her eyes and say, “I love you”, when we are watching The Longest Ride, and not with the hesitation stemming from fear of rejection, but with surety.

Because when I think of our love, I do not think of it as the slices of peppery yam at the breakfast table on Saturday mornings as a child, the slices that burned my tongue and yet I always wanted.

I do not think of it as you have been made to think of love, as series of emotional moments-kissing on the couch, breakfast in bed, scented roses on the dresser- collected in a book, Love.

With her, love has been the unemotional moments- Waiting in lines at the bank, staring at the waiters at Ozone Cinemas, counting the plaques along Independence tunnel when we are homeward from Maryland. It has been saying, “I hate you” with conviction and letting meaning envelope us about how what we felt was distant from hate, how it was something a lot deeper.

She is like ones’ favourite hip-hop song, teeming with the same yearning for its lyrics, with the same longing for its melody. But biko, she is not like these contemporary Nigerian songs with fleeting euphoria, the ones which we tire of after sometime. She is more of Fela, and Victor Olaiya and the songs which our Fathers would bob their heads to when it streams from their car stereos.

With her, I want to own a country house in Osumenyi, get married at an Art Studio in Mississippi and have children, refined like those Half-caste kids who say “Bathroom” when they mean “Toilet”. I want to listen to the sound of her laughter every morning, tell her of the newer ways I have learnt to love and remind her that love is like a changeling whose next form we do not know.

Remind her, that it is the well-mannered bloke from Kings College who woke up to Kellogg’s Fruit and Fibres at the breakfast table every morning. And the scandalous teenager from Mushin whose first words as a child were “sare, run olopa ti de, Police have arrived”

I want to tell her that to regulate love, to place it within the perimeters of feelings, emotions and our ‘required partner’ checklist is to kill it slowly. So that she would know, that although she hadn’t planned to love a writer whose favourite moments were spent in the golden pages of Books and who reads poetry to her twice a week. I want her to know that she has not loved wrongly.

I love her, really, I do. Perhaps because love to me is alliance, it is similar feeling to the bond between my childhood friends and I with whom I went on bizarre escapades with. To me, love is uncomplicated like that; it is camaraderie and companionship, and familiarity and acquaintance.

It is exploits to discover oneself in its irony, it is finding yourself simply because you lose yourself, it is the result of an abundance of self-love.

Because of this, I pray that our love always would last.

That it would not be like midday rain that thins into a drizzle after a short time or as succinct as the sentiments of the Lagos landlord who evicts his tenants thrice a year.

I pray that it would be healthy, wholesome like the faces of smiling children in Peak milk commercials, that our many ideas become deeds, our countless thoughts, actions. That we would embark on this crossing with the sufficient knowledge that we are scholars in its field, and not tutors, that we are willing to discover, rediscover and never for once admit that we know it all.

May our kisses be blissful, our touches warm and our laughter true. May we find newer ways to say, “I love you”, newer ways to love from our soul and inhale perpetual relieve from each other’s company.

May we long for the scent of each other’s perfume, the drone that is our voice, hold hands to stare at paintings and look out for the total wellbeing of the other.

Most of all, I pray we understand that perfect love is a passage, a crossing and not a destination.

Her name is Bae. And the problem is, she does not exist.