It is not out of place that I found you today after
searching for days that ran into weeks and weeks that ran into months. The
voices, both within and without my head, always assured me I would find
you. It was your smile I saw first, that
smile that is the color of the flow of Osimiri the great river- quiet and
graceful. But I expected you would run to me and assuage me with warm kisses.
Instead, the cold smack of your eyes, like the thrust of the Samurai’s
cherished sword, cut my excitement down to size and left it gasping for breath.
I would have found a bag your size and bundled you into it.
Then I’d take you back to the house and place you back in the frame in mother’s
living room. But I thought that would not win your affection. You’d call me a
kidnapper, or worse a caveman, then stain the paint on the canvas with your
tears.
Then I thought of cleaning your face of the ungainly stains
of leanness etched in your creases. You used to be like the well-fed African
woman, robust and rotund, and the colors lingered on your cheeks before
bouncing off into my eyes. But I thought that wouldn’t win your affection
either. You’d call me an unfeeling, ceremonial lunatic. Then you’d throw my
brushes at my face and scrounge your immortal eyes in unforgiving sorrow.
And you’ll laugh and fear when you tell your friends of the
sentimental fool whose canvas you stained with tears and whose brushes you
threw back full in the face. Your friends will shriek in oohhs and aahhs and
secretly wish it was them I loved. They will not remind you that our destinies
are like the roped pots of Igbo Ukwu- long and clinging. They will not tell you
that destinies are like the patterns on butterflies- they are locked in and
sealed after they have been painted. Your friends will not tell you you must have
me or no one else.
These your friends, of course they do not hear the many
whispers we exchange every night in my dreams. I tried to remind you but you
were too busy shouting and cheering the lunatic cops and more lunatic judges
you and those lunatic friends called to bundle me away- cheering them as they
came for me. I saw these ropes by the roadside and knew they were better than
any bag I could hope to take you back in. I only came at you with these ropes
because they would have been comfortable transport for taking you back home.
I wanted to tell you I’d been searching for you since you
dropped out and left the frame and canvas empty. I wanted to remind you of how
your face lit up whenever I came into the room, like the sky when the candle
light of the stars are turned on and tell you how your absence was the solar
eclipse that abruptly stole the life from our world. I wanted to remind you of
dreams and of songs, of snuggles and of giggles, and of the many tales you
listened to as I told them by the wane light in mother’s living room. I wanted
to tell you that your lips, Mona Lisa, were drawn for smiling, not for shouting
with lunatics. And now these lunatic cops that you called will not let me near
you. Worse still, they will not take this message to you.
