What happened to you?
Why were you forcing on the slightest hint of smile to crawl up and tear through those
lips that would have preferred a sigh of despair to that thin daylight hypocrisy,
and pierce those straight cheeks,
just to answer my hi?
I believed something from inside you switched off the dim light your smile always cast on your face from the shadows of that fluorescent lamp.
What happened to that weakness that made you lifelessly sleepwalk round the fireplace,
the nausea that rolls balls of slimy sticky saliva off your tongue every other quarter?
What happened during those brisk session and quick meetings you had with Ebuka, standing round that well sitting under that shade the almond tree provides by warding
off the rays of our frontage's fluorescent lamp?
What happened to what you said that made you not wish to sleep in,
made you look no less than a famished old witch,
in that shapeless ill-fitting dirty gown you recently took to,
and kept Ebuka's eyes alarmingly frighteningly scarlet
and his frame of mind in shreds?
What happened to that firm roundness and finger-pointing protrusion you berated Chioma with for her 'mere chestnuts'; and those measured moves of your hindquarters you cajoled Ngozi with for her to identical frozen 'patches',
that the former sagged into the bonnets of that annoying gown that mirrored your personality lately,
and the latter resizing the weight of its impact on the hems?
What happened that morning you hurried off with him?
It wasn't for the bank as you told me, right?
Or was it?
But his bearing betrayed the emotions of a schoolboy who picked a crisp note on the street on a lunchless afternoon,
Yours had that too,
save for that cue of fear that disagreed with the speed of your strides,
and that shadow that screamed,
'Somebody Help Me'
I caught in your eyes when you swiftly dislodged the certain meeting of our eyes?
I happened, right? Tell me! O kw'omelu? It happened.
You sang the mother's song,
and in your mother's tank
sank the murder'r's fangs!
Now, you're sitting before the fireplace -
fear flushed,
confusion lost,
sexy tank-top and 'boyfriend' jeans,
Marlian vibes gushing from Ebuka's mp3 -
frying masa, steaming awara and boiling kunu geda;
asking if he will take you out on Valentine's day - as if you've found the recipe to unscramble a scrambled egg and take it back to the mother hen's hatching nest.
Have you stuck out those two fingers reinforced with marrowless bones, soaked in cold blood
to your hubris;
are you pulling the legs of the daughter of Nyx,
the one with the measuring rod?
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