Paul Aremooluwa
I swear I could hear heaven applaud. I swear I could hear the angels flap their wings when we first met. When my eyes lit up yours and I sang "I Do!" Up-Down the aisle. When your touch melted my knees and your eyes divulge my inner thoughts. When we prayed for dark nights with no stars, we would gaze at the lonely moon. We taunt it by pointing at it, so it feels jealous in the absence of its sparks, and veils himself with clouds away from us.
Oh, the nights you hush the crickets to sing to me.
I swear I could hear nature
smile as the green grass follow our trail.
Our dreams were real. You taught me how to dream. I didn't have to
close my eyes anymore, being in your arms made me dream. Your kiss was without
intention and motive. It was natural as our beating heart. You would smile and
whisper that nothing could separate us.
I stumbled in love, you caught me. We stumbled
in love and love caught us.
Eternity is when the
clock ticks without you leaving. Time never changed how we felt, looked at or
loved each other. Time never dared to rip our hands apart. It just wouldn’t dare.
You taught my heart many songs it sings. You are that unending dose for my once
aching heart. The only meal I have for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Yes you were.
I woke up and found you had left. You left a note, it’s all you left.
My nose lost your smell, rum was in the air. A stranger walked in,
in your stead, demanding of my love. He was nothing like you my love.
He staggers home and bangs the door. My heart departs its nest
till I cough out of fear. He says he is you but I know you’re gone. You left
too early before the stranger came.
The lights couldn’t put out the darkness I felt, every minute and every
bit of the day it was there.
He kisses my lips, bruise
it with fists and kiss it again. When he touches my body, my nose and gums bleeds.
I bleed like candle in the heat of him. His gift of red rose, it reminds of the
colour of my blood, my very own blood on the carpet floor.
After each intervals of “Sorry” a much strange stranger returns
home to me.
I am chained without chains.
I am afraid of my home and married to this terror.
When shall I see my love?
Mom said, “You made your choice.”
“Divorce is not an option,” says dad.
But I want to go back to my love, my turtledove.
I swear my heart still beats for him.
No bruises or scars, no beating or assault can ever drown my love
for him.
The songs we sang,
under nights of starless skies, his kisses and hugs are shafts of light, in this
dark dungeon of mine.
Should I be bold? Tonight, be bold to fight back? Tell the
stranger I am vaulting out? If he dares touch me I’ll rip his heart out. I’ll cut
him with a knife, till he feels my fear and sees his own blood turn black. I
don’t care how insane I go. Staying with him made me more insane than the
episode to come.
This is my one way ticket
back to my love, to our love.
He walks in and I
told him, “It’s over stranger.”
He was mad with rage but I was madder with love’s rage.
He gripped my neck and squeezed my jugular. But he learned quickly,
this scared cat’s got nine lives. I pulled his collar, out my trouser came the
pen knife I planted right where his dark heart pumps violence. He let go of me immediately
with a squeal. A proud lion turned a lazy rat.
I could care less.
He stumbled across the room like the drunk he was. He broke the oval
glass jar on the wooden table as he fled from me. I forgave him for the broken
jar but not for the tiny shards of my broken heart. I would finish this then bury
him together with his apologies.
I followed behind as he tried hiding away in the bathroom, but not
so fast. He was bleeding the same red blood I bled the night before.
He was begging, “Please honey.” Same pleas I made to him days
before.
“Please don’t worry. It will be over soon.” I tried to encourage
him.
He was hurting, same hurt I always felt.
“I am sorry too” I brandished a bread knife which made his eyes
brighten with fear. He was standing close to the bathtub, his life dangling, and
the knife in my hand hanging in the air. His pleas meant nothing now. All
suffering ends now.
In his frantic effort to save his life, he pointed to a figure right
behind me. I refused to allow him distract me. I let the bread knife dive into
his stomach. He winced, it made me cringe, but he could barely feel much pain. He
was still pointing to the figure right behind me.
I finally looked, but
when I did, my heart died.
My darling love had returned but with a pen knife, my pen knife
sticking out of his kind heart. He was also bleeding from his stomach.
He was in great agony.
I screamed, but it didn’t make any meaning. His eyes were slowly
closing.
Who would do such a thing?
Alas in that bathroom mirror I saw my love and the bread knife dropped.
My love is the stranger all along. The stranger is the man I only loved.
I ran out of there to the note on the shelf. The one left by my
love before he left. I opened and gasped. Boldly written were two words I never
read,
“REHAB ME!”
I dropped the note and
screamed out loud. I ran back into the bathroom. For now I see him. The
stranger was gone and my love returned. His brown eyes’ been shut but he was
hanging on just to say,
“I am sorry.”
He breathed his last in
my hands.
On the floor he died in my hands.
“Here I am,” I clutched his hands lying beside him on the bathroom
floor, crying out my eyes and heart.
I am mourning both the stranger and my love. I wish I could have
any of both back but they were gone. I kissed his bloodied lips like the
stranger once kissed mine. I embraced the body of my love, like he often does.
This pill or bullet, one
would be the wild ride, my chariot that takes me home. Where I’ll finally
apologise to the stranger and be one with my love. As I ponder how to finish
it, the door opened, “FREE-ZE… POLICE!”
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