UCHENNA ONYISHI

I know the version of myself you think is good for you; the one that swore to put you above all that is good for him. He is dead now. He died this morning, or yesterday maybe. I am not sure. But I buried him in my mother’s garden, in the backyard of our family home in Enugu, next to the basils and the withered flowers of the tomatoes my mother planted sometime in October, after the rainy season.

I woke up that morning to an unusually quiet mind. When I got out of bed to use the bathroom and take a hot shower that helped with the January cold wrapping itself around my chest, I saw him lying there. Lifeless. Fatally wounded by his failures to love you perfectly without asking too much of you.

I stood there and watched him for a while, refusing to cry for a young man who was foolish enough to believe you when you told him your heart would come around. I refused to cry because I had seen what my tears could do to my mother. And I could hear her in the backyard calling my name. The garden had not been pruned in a while.

Above us, the southern-eastern clouds were gathering for their first meeting of the new season.