I want to dream you into breathing, feed you air in kisses and kisses until you gasp back into life, hoarding my breath in your lungs, my tears quenching your first thirst, my face the first thing you see, in my arms, the softest warmest welcome you will find but I must spread the ashes into the river, the slow mass wet at my feet, carrying your burnt parts and my grief with it.
The sun is low like a full cup in the horizon, jaundiced like diseased skin, too distant for comfort and the wind is silent as it ruffles my skin gentle like a goodbye from your fingertips. There are birds, there are children running away into the early evening dewy dream, their wet shorts still combing the earth for soil to water, all of this a memory of former times. I watch the ashes glint like iron fillings and I wonder if you will remember me in your paradise—will you? Remember me? Or you will remember the wetness near the door, in that shanty we lived towards the end that never dried whether during the rains or harmattan because the roof leaked and a water tank sat above our heads? We remember the strangest things.
Somewhere the church bell tolls and the wings of fleeing pigeons flit through the peace, shaking me from this daydream. I stand straighter and let out my hoarded breath. It has no value to me—inhale and exhale, when all I want to gift you is my dream, draw you a bath and fondle your knees, sweat with you in the gym, boxing shadows, counting weights, studying breathing exercises, listen to each other read poetry, tell tall tales of girls we have loved and lost. Like God, I must be a terrible sinner to call him into this, I want to breathe you into a life, not a mannequin but a living flower clutched in the atmosphere's tender grasp, I want to watch you rise your finger through sunlit dust motes and tell me it is a ruse to think dust golden. I repeat my hungers for you. You are not here to feed on my madness. I must do this alone.
I turn from the river and face the city, almost hidden in the dusty squall of harmattan. I can guess the twisting paths back to my empty apartment, the silence in there is complete yet I hesitate to go, to return into emptiness like a bird robbed of her chicks by hawks. I kick my sneakers into sand and watch the different parts of a clump of wet dust scatter like a hen digging through. My hands are in my pocket and they seek to rip holes through, clenching and unclenching.
A man passes with wreaths. He nods. I do not recognise him. I nod back and watch him place it on the river. The river seem to rock with the gift and soon the wreath sails away into the coming night. The man squats, lights a blunt and drags it. It glows like a small sun and its warmth seems to call to me and like a moth I fly towards it, my wings tender and raw with too much grand escapes.
We had wanted to escape back then, from DSC, though it was the only home we knew. We wanted something more, to be a part of the big timers, the city life, the neon signs and fast highways, the fast talking pimps and the high laughter of high girls on high heels. We wanted and wanted so much that DSC became a prison, a cocoon that won't break us free. So we fled. We fled to Benin, then to Lagos, then to Abuja and the further we fled, the stranger we became until one day, we came back home and home had packed up its bags and eloped with our memories. All that was left were obituary leaflets and drains that still filled up with water and fish.
The man stretch the blunt to me and I surprise myself—I have flown far even with these damp wings. I take a drag and the smoke swells inside me and I fly with it out of my lips into the night. The breeze is cold but the blunt is a raging fire in my lungs. I begin to sweat and shake, clench and unclench a fist. I pass the blunt back to the man and he drags it hard. He is squatting, squinting into the river and I am standing, my eyes digging into the sky when the lights blink into our space.
It is the security man, the one that watch the river of the dead, this small corner of the earth kept apart for mourners. He makes sure no one pisses or spits into it and no one stays long after visiting hours. It is after visiting hours. I do not want to leave. Some part of you still clings to my fingertips, my feet, the river bank, the very air tainted with weed smoke that I breathe. It is as sacred as a holy place can get without me staining it with my sorry confessions. I watch the light flicker and flicker. The security man dies not come. He has not seen me or the man. The man does not turn at all. He studies the river with all the hungers that I know and some that I am curious to know.
The light disappears just as the moon appears on the sky as if pinned by a stage hand in an amateur theatre. The river becomes a road and I see everyone passing, I mean those who have crossed. They move slow, each to their thoughts. I look for you then but you loom faraway, almost lost in the mists. I have thrown your ashes too far. I was angry and sad and I have a strong arm. I have broken the urn too. Well I have no plans to reuse it. I call to you and the vision trembles almost as if it was a placid puddle touched by a child's curious toe.
You do not turn. It feels as if you have forgotten me. It hurts more than your passing in my arms at the hospital, hearing the priest make the sign of the cross, administering the last rites to your silence, your eyes wild with pain and laughter. Then I had wanted to strangle something, something like a priest talking in monotone of heaven and hell. Where you not my heaven and my hell, purgatory even? Was I not the insane glint that peeped from the corner of your eyes? What did the man of the cloth know of love shared like sweet wine, bitter kola and water, like pale green shoots breaking earth to feed on sunlight? Where you not my friend from napkin days, catapults and fishing hooks, books too numerous to mention? Where you not the hoarder of my secrets, my hopes, my dreams?
We travelled far, I must confess. We went beyond the hopes of our fathers. Those two, broken by death and work, dreams shattered like glass windows long before we knew to say each other's names with tenderness. They always thought we would end up used up clones of themselves. We proved them wrong again and time again. We became clones of everybody else. The city, it welcomed us, ate and swallowed us and shat us out on the sidewalk strung out on diseases, sick on drugs.
What did we know, when we kept our innocence on our face and called to dirty fingers to dig into our throats for words. You saved me, you know this, with your annoying prayers and superstitions. I would have fallen for the old juju man that wanted someone young and healthy to feed his silent gods. It was your instincts that guided us back to the old long road we have known and come to respect. Yet you are not here to celebrate me. You are ashes in the wind.
The man gets up from his squat, folds his trousers to the knees and begins to wade into the river. There were those who did this. Those who became tired of the waiting and decide to pursue the future they fear in order to meet with the one they miss. I watch him until his head dips into the water without a ripple. A frog punctuates the silence with a croak and a owl flutters pass, casting her shadow on the still water. I turn back to the city and find it in darkness.
I begin the long trek back to the road. In the car, my phone screen glows. Twenty-five missed calls. It is my wife. It is my son. It is my wife's father. Where are you? Are you okay? I love you. Please come home? What do you think you are doing—text messages. I close the door and sit down there, stare at the windscreen. I can see the errie green glow on the face of the river. I know that it would be easy to take the man's path. I am not sure I will meet you in the place where I go. You were the Saint and if heaven is kind, you'd be there. I, on the other hand, have seen bloodstains on my cuff, heard the scream of torn throats, held a sweaty gun grip with intent. I shake my head and start the car. It warms me and the blunt begins to fade from my eyes.
I press my foot to the pedal and roll out of the cemetery. The leaves crunch beneath tires and at the gate, the security man waves a warning finger at me. I nod and drive pass. The expressway is empty but for cars entering the city. I turn the car away from the city, my bags catch my eyes as I turn from the rear view mirror and face forward, stepping hard on the gas pedal and yes, for another round of applause, I flee my home back into the emptiness of silence, seeking nostalgia like a virgin that has tasted a kiss and wants more. You are not here this time but I do this for you, for us, for all the butterflies we could not become. To die a pupae sucks, and my moulting wings itch to stretch, to fly, to be fondled by the wind.
The road stretches into night, into something darkly new. I am not worried about what I will find for there's nothing new under the moon, not even human evil. I chuckle to myself, find a kolanut and push it between teeth to keep me awake. As the horizon glimmers with stars, I drive fast and famished with hungers that will never be sated, my body exhausted from addictions. I seek you in the distance, or a memory of us, of you laughing, high on coke, on amphetamines, liquor, cough syrups, anything. I am alone in my loneliness as it should be but it feels good to remember your laughter.
I want noise to enfold me, so I press play on the stereo and music, almost sad, moving me with beats soft, spaced out with silent parts that say everything. I smile as I drive and soon the windscreen blurs with my tears. It is in this simple moment, faraway from where I now call home, distanced from where I have set you free that I find the wet hot spring of grief on my cheeks. I park the car and spend my emotions like it was a friday at the club. When the storm ceases, I am empty and full at the same time. I sigh and continue the journey back into life, into mundane things like football, kitchen, throwing away the trash, doing children's homework and loving a woman who does not know what to make of a man that no longer has the words to say I love you.
I watch the river disappear from view, become a road and the stars picking at the velvet stain of night. I pop a pill into my mouth and swallow, press hard on the pedal and increase the volume. I am going back home, back to DSC where it all began. Someone must tell your father that you took the brave path and your mother must have the chance to grieve. They will curse me of course. It is their due. Someone must be held responsible and it cannot be God. Will I see you at the end of this road?
My apologies for the delay. This took some writing to come out. I hope you like it.
©Osahon Oka, 2020.