IF......

Hi Friends,
I believe in being a conveyer of the many unsaids we have lurking in the hideouts of our domestic setting. I believe in opening the familial setting up to the light, not with an aim to wash our dirty linens in the public, but with an aim to creating this sentient aura where everybody knows that whatever it is they are battling with, they are not alone; they've got others fighting just the same battles and trying to hide in the darkness of the night to be themselves; their real selves. And this short story, If is one epistolary fictional story that sort of breaks through the tide with regards to this. So really, here is one story you won't want to miss.

Corey Barksdale

Dear Kelechi,
I am walking on the road again. Finding my steps along the rough patches and sticking my toes in muddy entrails, testing the ground to make sure my feet can go into it. But I am tired, so I can't see the mould and pricks anyway. And in spite of myself, I fall to my face at every junction, every turn. And Kelechi, even the road is tired. Our road. It misses you at every junction, at every turn. So, it writhes and turns with the pulping of some living adrenaline that makes my feet flay as they walk. I want to stop walking the road, I want to rest, rather. But you are not here with me, you are not here to lift me on your shoulders while you walk on, leaving me to drool over the sight of funny storey buildings that look like fondant splattered all over the floor.

You remember those times, right? When walking was fun, when strolling across the edgy mazes of our neighbourhood was like licking ice-cream from a cone bit by bit till the ice-cream got exhausted and all there was, was the cone. While walking, with me swaying your hands, we enjoyed the sights of motorcycles streaming through the road like tires wrapped in a bag of breeze and the posh cars tailing the Maruwas whose drivers temper no mercy for their side mirrors. We also savoured the advertising posters on the walls of beer parlours, the ones that did justice to making beer sound like mint or candy. We argued about whose brewery company brandished their beer in the best of ways. While I liked Star, the Shine Shine Bobo drink for real men, you went for Guinness. You said you liked that they always had a way of blending Africa into their barley fermented dark Stout mixture. The things they said, like "Black Africa", "Go Black"; they made the Africa in you feel proud.

I didn't know you had an Africa in you, not with the way you scampered about trying to learn how to use the fork and knife, but I did enjoy the sight of you mimicking the part of the Guinness World Cup advertisement where a black, bronze man loving the beer stood proudly to say, "My Friend, Udeme, is a great man."

With us on the road, getting home wasn't a thing anymore. Of course, it still wasn't an option, but somehow, we dragged our feet and swayed our hands some more and we even stopped by the road to look on some sights that we had yesterday. Over and over. Just so we didn't have to step our feet on the balcony and witness whatever sorry sight was waiting for us.

To be Continued

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