Dear Ijemabalum,

I was high the first day I slept with Afam. I slept with Afam the first day I met him, because I was high. I am high today, and realization runs down my spine and settles at the small of my back in a cold puddle. I do not love my fiancé, and our wedding is a month away. Anxiety darts around in my chest in a flurry of sweat. I am scared to live the rest of my life with this man. Any man I settle down with would be settling down for the next best thing, because no one can come close to my best thing.

I am not meant to see him today, but I decide to. I want to tell him. I want to blow up my life, because it looks like Jenga blocks, stacked together tightly. So boring, so safe, so mediocre. I let myself into his apartment, because he should still be at work. He is here, with my sister, in his room, I hear them before I see them. My sister is straddling him, their hips locked, moving in tandem. Like the ebb and flow of the ocean. I should feel hurt, mad, betrayed. But I am lightheaded with relief. Now I can unlock the den, where I jailed all the sadness in me. Where I tamed it because I couldn’t explain why I felt this sad. I can let the darkness drown me now, and blame it on this betrayal. I let them see that I have seen them, then I am in the car racing back home.

Now I can choose not to do this anymore. I can exhale and stay that way. I can let go now, and float away with the darkness.

When I wake up, I am shocked to find myself in heaven because I don’t deserve it. I am biblically full of sin. You’re here, I know you’re here before I see you. I can smell your grape scented perfume. Why am I here? I should be in hell. You come into the room and sit next to my feet, you touch it lightly and I feel it in my stomach. You never used to touch me, I barely touch you, you would always bat my hands off and we would end up in a mock fight – flailing our arms and smacking the back of each other’s palms. This is what convinces me that I am in heaven.

You lean into me and take my lips into yours, and a cry rumbles in my throat. Our lips have touched once, a million years ago. But this is not a peck, it’s not a grazing of lips. It’s a feasting, an inhaling. If I am really in heaven, the archangels should have captured us now, they would have sent us hurtling into hell in a streak of lightning.
You are gone like you came and I follow you into the kitchen, like moth drawn to light. You’re making pancakes, the browning pancakes are speckled with red pepper and onions. It smells like our Saturday mornings back in Enugu, in the damp room we shared. But where are we?

Our limbs are tangled in bed, our bellies greased with onions and pepper. Our mouths tingle from the menthol in our toothpaste. We feel older, you feel different. I understand that I am living someone’s life, because yesterday, I was dead. This knowledge comes with a bubbling frisson in my chest. I might have been dead yesterday, but I am in the hands of another of you that likes to hold me, that doesn’t shrug off my touch, another of you that collapses into me when my fingers brush your sides, another of you that always reaches in to kiss me. I am excited.

Loving you has always been a cross I bore, now it’s a blessing I am basking in. Yet the truth is, I loved the other you that smacks my arm when I reach for your waist. Your other you that twerks to the slight burn of my palm hitting your backside. Your other you I had banter with and spoke to with my eyes. I loved that other you even when I knew that you could never love me back. At least not like that. I still love that other you.

I tell you that I really lucked out with you. You scoff and look at me funny, “What do you mean? No one even knows about us.” I shrug and cuddle you tighter. Only if you knew where I was coming from. “No Games” by Fave is playing from a small round Bluetooth speaker. You comment that it’s my current favorite song, but I have never heard the song. I just got here last night. You play the song three more times. You’re right, I love this song. It feels like something I would have written to you. I tell you this and you remind me that I have told you this every time the song played.
“Let’s get a tattoo that says LOVERS INDOORS,” I tell you, my forefinger running circles on your ribs.
“I will tattoo mine where your hand is now.”
“Really?” I am shocked. This you is just as spontaneous as you’re, but she is less suspicious of things, she doesn’t ask all the questions you used to ask me. like, “Why are you being nice to me?” “Why?” when I asked you to let me hold your hand. “Why?” when I bought you a random gift. This you accepts my help when I give it, she doesn’t wave the offer off, or shrug away from it. We are getting a tattoo tomorrow.

This you has introduced me to my favorite playlist. She says it took me one month of intense listening and strict selection. I am loving the songs. “bread and butter” by Zubi, is my second favorite song. It explains the state I am in. In Eden, before the forbidden fruit was eaten. Before the ten commandments. Before everything that has happened afterwards. We are both high and numbed from the pain of our newly acquired tattoos. Yours on your right side, mine on the inside of my right wrist. She tells me that I am just like the other me, that she knew. I want to ask her what she means, but I am really high. Somehow because of this, I understand exactly what you’re saying, when you explain that you were too sad in the other life so, you decided to leave it. I understand what you meant when you said that you didn’t have one grave reason why you were always sad. I want to ask what made you so sad in your other life that you had to leave, but I am too high. Somehow because of this, I realize that it means we exist together in more than one universe as lovers, because I already know that in every universe where I am, you’re there too. That I love you in every universe. This you loves to cook for me, leave her leg on top of mine, touch me, kiss me, make love to me. I am definitely in heaven.

I am not in heaven, I am still on earth, in Abuja where we both relocated to a year ago. My sister is still my sister, my parents still hang on her every word. My brothers still love her too much to ever tell her that she is wrong most of the time. She still loves to tell me what to do. I do not like my sister at all, but I love her. I ignore her call, I turn on ‘do not disturb’ and wriggle in next to you on the couch. I never used to put my phone on DND, I always left it off in case you needed me. But now you’re next to me. We are on earth, in a country that would imprison us if they found out about us, we are still a secret outside these doors. But at least, you’re with me in this. In this life, we are lovers indoors. That’s way more than I had.

We go to work, we meet up for lunch, we go out for drinks and barbecue fish with our friends. You place your thigh on my lap and curl your leg around my knee. I love us here, I love that we are women, that we can be like this and no one would bat an eyelid. I feed you chips and plantain, we pretend that we are doing this to tease our friends. I love feeding you. We’ve always been great roommates, here we are greater lovers. With you my job doesn’t suck, I wake up every day just so I can hustle through the day and get back home to you. I have loved every moment of this whole year with you, every ticking second, every hair on your skin, every note of your laughter, your sighs, your hisses. I wake up today feeling woozy, you’re in the kitchen again making pancakes, I can eat only your pancakes for the rest of my life. I want to be with you for the rest of my life. But something is wrong.

I am blanking out, I can’t remember what you said two minutes ago, I can’t remember waking up. I concentrate on the smell of your pancakes. I grasp onto every scent around me, your grape scented perfume, your minty leave-in conditioner, the smell of your skin. I am holding on for dear life. I smell pancakes, grapes, mint and then I smell bleach. The sharp smell makes my nose wrinkle, and my eyelids flutter open. My eyeballs are attacked by a stark light. A constant beeping jabs my ears. There is fire on my skin, inside my bones, behind my eyelids, on my lips. I am definitely in hell now. A shadow blocks out the light and it’s safe to open my eyes, my mother is here, she is saying things I cannot hear, that I don’t want to hear. My father is behind her and so is my sister. I do not need anyone to tell me where I am, I can smell it, hear it, feel it. I don’t know how I am back here. I died one year ago.

I don’t want to know, I want to get away from here, by any means. My mother is still talking, my father is focused on something above my head. My sister is uncharacteristically quiet, but if she is here, it means no one else knows I caught her riding Afam into the clouds. It means they both think the bandage around my wrists is my new found way of revolting, they think this is another locking myself in my room, another torrent of tears, another burst of angry words. If someone doesn’t get me away from here, I am going to set their lives on fire, all of them. I am going to crash and burn the image of their perfect daughter, our perfect happy family. Right now, I want everyone to leave me alone, I want to close my eyes and doze off, I want your pancakes, your lips on mine, your leg on my lap. I want you.

A nurse comes to my rescue, she injects a yellow liquid into the IV bag hanging above my bed, she checks my blood pressure, and shepherds everyone out of the room. When I open my eyes again, you’re here, not the you I left behind, this you. Your eyes are asking me many questions. They’re sad, angry, irritated. “What type of playing is this?” they ask me. I want to be defensive, I want to blame it on my sister and Afam, but I don’t feel like lying today. I tell you with my eyes that I was really tired, I expect you to roll your eyes at me. Instead, you wrap your fingers around my bandaged wrist, I can’t read what you’re telling me, this you almost never touches me. I stay very still, so you don’t remember to pull your hand away. We sit in silence.

I tell you that I am not marrying Afam anymore, I tell you that I don’t love him, and that I don’t want to spend the rest of my life looking outside. I don’t tell you yet about his affair with my sister. I will you tell you about that later, now is about truths. You don’t barrage me with questions, I am glad. We sit in silence again.

“So, what’s your plan?” you ask me.
“I don’t know… attempt to off myself again,” I laugh knowing you will find it funny, and you do, you move to slap my hand but decide against it.
“Come, let’s move to Abuja together, there is nothing you’re doing here anyway. You will find a job, you’re smart, I have told you before to convince Afam to move his business there, now that everything has scattered, let us go and figure it out there.”
“Where will I stay? With you and Jidenna?”
“Like you’re not the third person in our relationship already,” you roll your eyes at me.

 

Dear Ijem,

I know you think you’re convincing me, but my mind has already been made up, long before I decided to die, even more so now. I will pack up and move to the ends of the earth if you’re there. A part of me wishes that in this universe there is a little hope that you’re my lover, but it doesn’t matter. I will take the words your eyes speak, the sharp tingling of my hand after you’ve slapped it away from yours, I can live with Jidenna being your lover. I can take it all, because in another life, you’re making pancakes for me, in another life we have matching tattoos and sleep with our legs tangled together. I am ok with this life because you’re here, and I love you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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