I
I am streaks of your past that trickle down the fresh gloss of your life like rainwater along a sheet of glass and the muted voice in the cacophony of your existence. You say that you have moved on, that you have deserted my love somewhere along the line and that now it stands in threadbare clothes and dusty feet, like the preposterous woman from Oko gallivanting about the market place.
My love like this woman is confused, it does not know that men no longer give their ladies “Love” alone just as this insane woman is unaware people do not run about in threadbare clothes.
My “love” is oblivious of the fact that in the market of life, love is the candid trader beckoning on customers from a table teeming with putrid goods. And that love is too the mendacious trader flanked by customers behind a table stuffed with beguiling wares.
You see, I should have known that love, as a meal of Rice and Stew or Bread and Tea was something that came in twos. I should have known that it was necessary that love be escorted by something else-wealth, wealth, wealth-and that my unadorned show of love was not candour but foolishness.
I should have known that love was designed to be seasoned with lies, that some certain level of deceitfulness and treachery were the adhesives that held the detached frameworks of love together, that they were the slim threads that sewed its frayed pieces and that without these, love would fall apart.
My love like the insane woman is threadbare, it’s scruffy. There are no exotic dinner dates to fill its gaps, or nights spent at lavish hotels.
They started to show, these holes, when you wanted more money to make your hair at some saloon on the island and to buy milk coloured creams in slenderer bottles than before. I learnt early that requests not granted became dissatisfaction before frustration and finally anger.
Your friends came then “Leave this man, how can he give you love alone?” and “Shine your eyes my sister”
I am the mad woman from Oko and your friends are the passengers in a Bus speeding past whom recognising the oddity in my behaviour, snap their fingers, fold their arms, shrug their shoulders and prescribe solutions.
You
You are the newly purchased trinket sprawled out for people to see and admire, for men to see and admire. The pristine Brocade ogled at by society women, burnished and durable like steel. You cost thrice the regular price in Balogun and yet they talk about you, their hands itch to hold you.
It is acumen for one to sniff rejection from a distance and twice the acumen for one to act on it. Hey look, in the still-life portrait of your existence, I am not the vivacious fountain gushing like coiling springs, or the broad-leaved green trees, vibrant and sweet smelling.
I am not the giraffes or zebras strolling past, or the polished stone lying at the foot of the spring. I am rather the ball of yellow sun, tucked at one corner of the backdrop. Not the silver slants of rain people jump at because of its novelty, but the ball of yellow sun, regular, fading at dusk.
Juliet of yesterday, biko, listen.
I am no longer willing to exchange my love for shrugged shoulders, or make excuses for the sloppiness in yours. I am no longer willing to say, “Julie will call me, she is just so busy she forgot my Birthday” or “the man she laughs with over the phone at 1am is her friend, her man friend”.
You said that night “I don’t want again Obim, love is not enough” and those words had played catch and ball in my head for days.
However, Julie, I think now that I do not want again too.
I am starting to learn that life without Juliet’s is life too and that not every man must be ascribed to a girl. I am starting to learn that it’s okay if I go to bed early every night and have missed calls and texts only from colleagues in the office the next morning.
It’s okay if I stay chaste, if while I watch FIFTY SHADES OF GREY and my imaginations choose to sprint, it’s okay that I think up a woman’s face in those scenes, that the woman doesn’t have to be you or anyone I know.
Julie bekee, I have learnt of this safe place called imagination, where girls like you fall in love with men like me, and love is the only deciding factor for a robust relationship.
In this place, you love me, without the carelessness, you are known for Julie, in this place, you love me quaintly.
Yet, It is you I see beyond that safe place sometimes, lining your lips with cocoa eye pencil, gushing about your favourite Mariah Carey song, and then I want you again, for one second, I want you, before I un-want you.
We
If our love were a Novel Julie, we would be on the middle page. Not the first where everything is new and adventurous or the exciting last we wish would never end. But the middle where things are constant, repetitive and plain.
It is in this middle page that things fell apart. I like to think sometimes that you got bored of our love, of the little portion of life we shared. It’s safer to haul the blame on you, on something you did rather than on something I did not do. We, us, and whatever we had was just as confusing as the lines of the Pablo Neruda’s poems we read together.
I do not love you except because I love you
I go from loving to not loving you
From waiting to not waiting for you
My heart moves from cold to fire
I love you only because it’s you the one I love
Julie, this is for you, from the Romeo you do not deserve. This is to tell you that I’ve learnt about a new kind of love, a love that doesn’t judge or demand, love requited, Julie I’ve learnt to love myself.
And for the other Romeo’s who have no Juliet’s, we will be okay.
Someday, some woman would notice your honest intentions and love you for them, she will adore you without questions and consider you enough.
Some woman would see the many things the others didn’t, understand that you are special, that you are sufficient.
Until then, fellow Romeo, keep living without love and tossing the Nicholas Spark titles out your reading list. For Bro, we will do just fine.
