WILD CHASE

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!”