Elsie was buried the next day. A little wood carved as her coffin. I would always remember the tender smile and care on her face, she was the first love of my life and the first cut is the deepest. I didn’t cry I had learnt how to live hiding my own feelings. I watched as she was covered up in the sand, I forced the tears out from my eyes but they just would not fall out.
I cursed myself for not being able to cry, the fury in my heart eating deep into my veins. “She was a good girl” the elderly woman said to me.
Elsie was not just a good girl, she was something else, I would use the phrase “exceptional” when it came to her. She literally had this “crazy” attitude that jingled all through my heart.
Moving on without her was very herculean though we had only known for months of war, I still felt that she was the best person to have been in my life. I could remember our conversations together, how it made me fee
A poem dedicated to “blood and water” by Osuagwu Alexander.MY SINWhat actually led me hereWhat have I doneCould I have saved himWas I scared or stupidAm writing to free my guiltBut reading this scriptLiterally pricks my conscienceAll I did was watchBut I feel my ignorance was a sinAnd it haunts me dailyI’ve always been waryBut this blame was mineIt was halp past nineOn that cold dark nightA scene pictographed in meMy eyes met him afarHis heels were in motionHis eyes were redFilled with undeniable fearHe was limpingHis body filled with shiveringHe kept on strugglingBeing aware of his doomed fateBecause of his faithAn opposition of religionWhich innovated destructionAn environment where ethnicityHas disrupted ethicalityAnd im
Blood and Water is a story that points to a civil war in West Africa, Nigeria and the hovering hunger for survival by two teenage boys. Hope you enjoy. Completed version with no coins for now. Make sure you drop your reviews...***Rumours of a WarA proverb says that when it rains everyday, there is a bound of sorrow within the rain. Maybe we were not that rich but we were happy or we claimed to be. The only problem was that I was no longer in school. I think I liked it that way, school stress was so hard especially now that I was in the junior secondary.“Eze there is no water in the house, “that was my mother’s voice, she was a school teacher but since the “defendants” started protesting last month, all schools have been closed. The defendants wanted more social amenities for our town and more finance to aid our development but the government did not heed to them. There is a rumor that they want t
I woke up on top of the mat in my room which I shared with my younger brother. I was subconscious of how I had gotten to the room. Mother must have carried me inside.I thought I should be the one taking care of her. I remembered my father and ran off crazily waking my brother with the shuffling noise. Mama was at the backyard boiling water in the separate thatch used as our kitchen. “Good morning mama!” I greeted, she stared at my direction, nodded her head and kept on with what she was doing. I was really filled with curiosity, I wanted to know where my papa had gone and if he was back. “Mama, is papa back yet?” I asked waiting patiently for an answer that I didn’t get. She kept mute and this heightened my anxiety. “What if something bad had happened to papa, to my papa” I thought subconsciously. My mind kept on imagining crazy things, Papa shot dead lying in one of those forests. Our community was no longer the way i
It has been a fortnight since the soldiers took papa. We’ve not heard from him, we’ve no idea if papa is alright. My mother had been torn with anguish, she rarely ate nor did anything at home except sleep and cry.This was the time for me to be the man of the house, to handle the responsibility that papa had bestowed on me, it was not easy as anticipated, I didn’t even know where to start.I got some firewood and started to cook inside the kitchen. “Ikem” I called while he replied from inside of the house and made himself visible.“There’s no water in the house, please go and fetch some water” Ikem did not complain he took the gallon and went off to fetch water, I was surprised that he had obeyed without complain, I kind of expected some resistance. I finished preparing food and served Ikem some then took some to Mama.“Am not feeling hungry” mama sighed.“You’ve barely eaten a
Edmund Burke once said and I quote, "All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing."We may seem to have acted but we were still the minority in the state.The morning was serene probably the first time in a long time to have a dawn rise without the soldiers gallivanting our streets, without the blaring of fear lurking around in the corners of the streets.We were packing our luggages to flee the community on that specific dawn. Everywhere seemed to be peaceful but there was this humongous stench of fear violating the whole geography, this seemed like the right opportunity to flee.Such degree of calmness was ironic to the real commotion. The villagers were also fleeing the destination like us, we had decided to travel in groups for security and precautionary reasons. Mama placed the huge bag on my head as we trooped out quietly with some of the other villagers. “We will be crossing the border by 3am hopefully,” pap
The stars seemed to have lost their luminating colours. A foul stench of the apocalypse violates the biosphere. Two months since the ordeal where we had last seen papa. the community is unreasonably quiet, the soldiers have returned in their multitude to restore order in our community. They came back prepared. They had modernized weapons such as an armored truck and sophisticated guns which sounded like a granite.Hunger had torn down homes. Sicknesses were prevailing in the jurisdiction, we were cut off from the outside world, the media could not project our situation.They projected us as enemies in their daily news cast, projected us as anarchist and terrorist who can only be quenched by violence.Everyone had failed us; the media, the government, the outside sources which my father had believed could protect us. We were not only subdued but forced to watch hunger and death tear through our vanjing homes.We were eaten up by kwashiork
I covered myself with a grey wrapper which I saw on the canoe. The man who had rescued me seemed to be in his mid seventies. He was quite kind to me – a character which seemed rare to come by these days.He seemed to be a fisherman. He was quite very optimistic though he had made no catch yet since, he’d just keep on being in high spirits.“Are you a runaway?” he asked. He had a very weird voice.“No” I replied with a gesticulation.“Did you want to drown yourself?” he queried again “You can just dive back and I will act like am not here” sense of humor, huh. I crossed a smile across my face “I want to get my sick brother some drugs in the city” I tried to defend myself from his peering, inquisitive gaze fixated on me. He nodded his head for some time, he seemed to be digesting my story, probably to discover the fallacity in my tales. “The town is on
I followed the van till it got to its destination. I thanked my stars since I had been quite sapped out to continue, my legs were very weak, aching but I just covered the pain in my face.I was just in time to see Papa being escorted out with the rest of the prisoners, he was almost unrecognizable. A man who had once been great was now similar to a psycho living under the bridge.I followed immediately trying to breach the distance. Papa was looking scraggy, his beards overgrown, his hairs tattered, his eyes diluted, he was bleeding, probably over beaten and tortured by the soldiers. His face was no more the smile I had been familiar with, his eyes were red, he had grown very lean – the part which seemed to change the most was the despair written all over his spirits.He was a broken man, one who had lost everything, a role model who could not even inspire himself to heights he had projected. He turned to me, gave me a faint smile, nodded his h