Blinding Truths

I wish you’d left me in the dark. I wish you’d kept the thick layers of wool wrapped tightly around my head, leaving only slits for me to breathe. It’s not as though I didn’t know. We both know how sweet denial can be – thick, sickly, and comforting. I knew.

I’d caught a whiff of the dark lies rolled with the white ones – perfectly kneaded and skillfully served. I noted the shifty look – that thing your eyes do when your mask slips out of place. I never missed the involuntary tremor whenever your heart broke into a sweat when the call was too close for comfort. I’m seasoned at the game; and after years of hiding, I read the neon signs you fought so hard to gun down. But I chose to ignore them because it’s better for my fragile heart.

Ignorance may not be an excuse, but it sure can be bliss sometimes. I reveled in it; drank from the well until I was blinded by it. Out of sight threw it way past the back of my mind, but today… today you ripped off the wool and shone the truth in my face with such intensity that my blindness is now of another sort.

I’m hurting for you. Hurting to see you hurt yourself with the very hands I once held to seek strength. You’re sinking claws into your skin and bleeding rebellion when we both know you know better; can do better; can be better. We can all be better, but you smile – a bright crescent etched from eye to eye, draped in sadness. I see it beyond reason as there’s nothing to doubt. What is there to deny when each side of my face has been slapped with confirmation.

I’m trying not to cry. Holding the fort on the periphery of my dam that threatens to drown me with grief. I’m holding it back because I refuse to be overcome, overtaken, or overruled. I hold it back although you insist on touching the fire to see if it’s hot¹. I’ll keep my tears at bay even as you feel the burn but choose to hold on as though the heat will subside. This time I won’t cry. I won’t.

© LaYinka Sanni, August 2014.

¹ “Some people insist on touching the fire to see if it’s hot” – originally attributed to Jasmin Begum Kennedy.

Five Minute Freewrite: Temi’s Wrath

This was a freewrite where I had to write a piece in five minutes using five of the following ten words: enemy, magenta, bark, tile, thirty, grate, leave, mint, fly, shift. – LY.

“Owolabi! Owolabi!” Farida tightened her grip on the handful of material already scrunched in her fist. “Do you even know what your name means? Do you know how valuable your title is? Ehn? Do you?” The head above the collar she was close to strangling shook with each syllable as she barked the words.

“After all the struggling. All the work I do, this is what you leave me with, ehn? This is my reward after thirty years? This is my reward. Lord, God, help me. Help me with this man.”

She thrust her husband away from her and slumped into the mint green sofa that had more lumps than comfortable.

“The devil is a liar. My enemy. And I shall rebuke him from this house. I cannot allow him to stay in this house!”

She was back on her feet now, pacing the eight steps from one end of the living room to the other, her leg bumping into the scratched centre table. Owolabi shifted in the spot he’d been planted in, rubbing the red rings around his neck.

“Temitope…” He fumbled for the words. Anything that would make her stop shouting and still his hands from shaking. “Temi…” A whisper of her Yoruba name was all he could muster as he crumbled in fear of what she might throw at him this time.

© LaYinka Sanni, July 2014

Constrained

A morning of free writing that’s left me wondering who she is. ~ LY.

There were four of them. Four men grasping what part of me they could. Fingers clasping my arms, my legs, holding my head still. I squeezed my lungs free of 18 years of inhales and shot them out to the heavens.

‘Get them off me, Lord, get them off!’

My legs wooden in their pulls, arms lead within their shoves – why couldn’t they see her? Why couldn’t they see her etching through her wrist as she sang my name? Why couldn’t they hear the lullaby as the blood dripped? Why couldn’t they see the sneer of a smile; her red stained teeth that oozed a melody that scratched every inch of me.

They held on even as my body surrendered. Even as my eyelids gave way and my head flopped to the side. They didn’t stop. Unrelenting in their mission to violate my freedoms. Stripping me bare of my right to be called a person; of my right to just be.

I let go. Let them do as they will. I’ve always been a prisoner, anyway. To be locked up another night, or a week, or a decade – I don’t care. I let go and drifted to the recess of safety. Their drugs can’t reach me here. They’ll think they’ve tamed me, but their drugs can’t reach me here.

© LaYinka Sanni, March 2014.

Keep Life Moving

“You’re going to face much more than a ripped test paper,”  Akeela said, rummaging through her heavy bag to find her purse as they stood in line to use the ATM. “Some things will literally bring you to your knees, but it doesn’t mean you can’t get up.”

Ikram stood stone-still as she blinked hard, her eyes skimming over the words.

“Can you un-rip the paper?”
“No,” Ikram said, a little louder than a whisper.
“Can a new test be printed?”
“Yeah, but―”
“Uh-uh. Can a new test be printed?”
“Yes.” She sighed.
“And can you find another one to do tonight?”
“Yes.”
“You see?” Akeela said looking up from her purse search mission. Ikram’s fists were stuffed in her loose jogging bottoms, head bent low as she concentrated on not blinking a tear. Mustn’t blink a tear. Mustn’t blink a tear.

“Sometimes life dishes out things we don’t like, and many things we can’t change. But what can we do?”

Silence. She lifted Ikram’s chin with an index finger so she looked past her at the parting grey clouds.

“We can keep things moving, darling,” she said, lowering herself until her lips were at the level of her daughter’s ears. “We have to keep life moving.”

Akeela planted a kiss on Ikram’s cheek. She blinked. And tiny droplets joined her single stream.

‘Keep life moving’, she thought.

© LaYinka Sanni, March 2014.