Myrha's Blog

COZA & Victoria    Today, I feel restless. It's like birds are in my stomach, flying around, perching all at once and then flying again.   I do not want to go out; these kinds of days I stayed in my room in university. I would have covered myself with my purple blanket and then cried, eaten, urinated and cried again.    Then, this feeling of wasting away was usually attached to something tangible, like the feeling that my life had no purpose or of not having money at all and anyone to call. But this morning, there is no reason.   I go out anyway, to work.   Work is almost sad, the same routine. Everyone does the same things like everyday, says the same things, "Victoria, good morning, howdy?"  "Do you think Fatoyinbo actually did that?" Falls mundanely on my mind, like Martha's daily heavily made-up face.   I am grateful for the few customers booking rooms today and that it's almost 1pm.   Then I see Gideon, strol...

EPSTEIN SUICIDE    The banana I am eating tastes flat when Joy tells me, "He died in his cell." I am feeling angry and very cold.   "How?!" I ask.   Our favorite Alan Walker's song , Spectre  becomes muffled and my ears are throbbing like everyone in the room can hear it.   She shruggs, "He killed himself,"  I turn and prop my head to face her. She is sitting on my bed with me in her laps.   "I saw it this morning."   "From where? It's a rumour," I blurt, begging my voice not to crack, begging it to be a rumour.   "NBC," she stops touching my hair to stretch and collect groudnuts, before exhaling, "it's everywhere."   When I was younger, I was infatuated with America and confused by American news, who is Osama Bin Laden? And why do they always talk about him? Is he different from Gadafi? I would ask Dad as he argued on the merits of Gadafi's leadership, with his friend. And sometimes ...

PINS AND SCENTED CANDLES    I visited her house today. She had asked, asked and implied,  "I made egwusi soup, shey you will eat?" She would say, after one Physics class on vector algebra. I would mumble, laugh and change the subject. We were not that close.   But, it had rained this morning and I had predicted that few people would be in class. And because immediately that thought ebbed my mind went to her, I have not seen that girl in class for some time now. I had called her, that early, twice. She picked up and let my 'Hellos' fall on silence and she did not also come for the other classes so I decided to go to her house.   I do not think I should have gone, but something in the melodrama of that morning, the lonely feeling of class, the cool from rainy breezes that touched my clothes and insisted on being more to me than just air, drove me to see her.   I asked Linda to take me there, she declined and instead 'described' the place...

ONYEKACHI    Onyekachi, I remembered you this morning. Why? Because sometimes it is like that.   When you died was it OK for you? Did your life 'flash before your eyes,' as they say? Where you scared?    Do you feel you should have been nicer to me? I hope you do not because I did, I felt I should not have fought with you, I wished I had not, for a long time it nagged me and it was a choking feeling, uncomfortable like a scratchy, new sweater.   Every moment of the year and a few months after you died, our class was still housing your absence, it was suddenly noisy and then quiet again.   Your seat-mate left the school that week, but of course, you would have liked that: you always wanted Phil with his ruggedness to be your seatie.     When Teacher Felix came to tell us why we had had no classes that day, the class was silent, "Onyeka passed away last night, some of you will be picked to go for his burial with the teacher...

ORANGE HAIR    I could start with her ready smile or no, maybe her smell; that fruity smell that I am sure she discovered and couldn't let go off for what? I'm assuming five, six years now; she seemed so poised, like someone might want to hurt her and she was staying ready for it.   It was this poise that made me walk up to her the first time, a nudge nudging, "She just might be  woke, " pulled me. Turned out she was.   I greeted her back, the normal, half-swaggering, half-casual "How far?" Which she did an about-face to, her face older than what I thought I saw from afar. My greeting was inappropriate.   I began to fidget, she mercifully flashed a smile, I smiled back.  "How are you?" She asked, "I'm fine, I'm Miracle,"  I remember saying.   You're watching the game? Why were you smiling like that? How come you don't wear earrings?...all these questions, I itched to ask this free spirit. Sh...

  SPIRIT     I'm studying a handout and getting groggy this fine Sunday afternoon in my department's building ; a short time after one of my yawns  this person walks past, makes a U-turn and comes back, a tight smile on his face.  Geek alert!!! The glasses, the smile, the intensity of his gaze. I like...   He joins me on the bench, his arm trembles a little as he cleans the seat; this is the last thing I need now, right now I don't want any social fumbling around me, I'm already exhausted from the heat wave, "Bikonu ,what is  that smell?" I ask myself, it's  pleasant, too pleasant for a geek. In my experience, geeks smell like they've been indoors for too long, a stuffy aftermath imbues their bodies and personalities; sometimes they smell like unwashed, sweaty clothes, but this one, he smells...   We talk, we have similar interests, we exchange numbers, we talk some more. We talk God, feminism, Forex, sexual abuse and he ...

  LESSER THAN II    "Four is lesser than three, is this true or false?" "False!" Four is a number, three another number but four is greater than three, this is the law, this is the reason why we can buy and sell - inequality. "That is correct," I hear her low voice approve.   I die another death but I know I'll live this time because it has happened many times before and I know when the beating is too hard for my body to take, I do not even try to run - it only fuels the hits.  This time I have nobody to defend myself for, this time I am not pregnant. When the tide ebbs, we would make up again, again. Let it go.   I should protect my face first, now that I hear the click of metal, his belt's buckle. Ah! I like the sound it makes in the air. Sometimes, the pain is pleasurable, those times when he is not drunk; when he actually takes his time to hurt me numb, yes!!! It is only when I am numb that the pleasure starts to trickle in slow...

LESSER THAN I     "Me, I am a feminist and I write about women experiences and the ideologies of gender-utopia.   Is gender blindness an aim of the feminist movement, is it a worthy aim? This is a discussion for another day.   What happens when women start being  paid the same for the same jobs, when marriage and the seeming protection and ownership thereof are no longer  things women alone should aspire for  when marriage finally becomes a partnership and not a bond of ownership: where the man is seen as the driver and the woman, the car; when rape is not justified because a girl is dressed in a particular way or behaves in a particular way, when men are finally seen as not uncivilised animals and are no longer excused by being represented that way but are seen as people who can control their sexual appetites as any woman can, what happens after men have been allowed to cry more, what happens then? Would feminism still be needed?"  ...

  FACES  "You just slapped me?!" Did I slap her? I did not even feel my palm meet her skin, I only remember a red haze swallow me and ominous silence.   ''Oh God!! shameless, that is what you are, all of you!'' What is she talking about?   ''You were inside your office with a foolish woman and I am trying to protect us and you slap me!! So this is it? You have been looking for an opportunity to send me away from this house? No? You paid bride price complete oh! Ka'm gwa kwa gi, let me just tell you, unless my father will give it back to you I will not leave!!'' Papa is dead.   ''I will not leave this house for any woman!!!'' She shrieks and  turns away from me, to inspect her face. Her usual flawless skin is red below one cheek; as she slowly turns her head to the mirror in front of her, she begins to whimper.   "I'm..." I begin, her phone cuts me short with a love song; it mocks us. '...

ANGST     I want to break something, to hit something fragile on a hard wall and listen intently to it splintering. Destroy totally, take action - purposeful or not.   To do something finally, something that is concrete but not complicating things like weakness, just the drunken and happy feeling of doing wrong to intimidate.   I broke mother's favorite glass cup, a mixed sense of achievement moves from my lower belly to my chest and now against my will, my torso bends to gather the pink jagged pieces. Quickly.