UCHENNA ONYISHI

My Gentle Halimah, I think about you. Here and there, at unexpected times in my day, I think about you. I imagine myself writing to you and watching as the words meant for you come together on their own. But I am unbelievably good at living many lives in my head. I have shown incredible love to women who have left me for other men, I have had several fathers who’ve died so I could live, and I have brought harm to the hearts of many women.

I have become a great writer and a failed one, a father of a dead child and husband to a weeping mother. I have picked up the phone to terrible news about the most painful deaths, and I have watched women who loved me mourn my passing. All of these are part of the many lives I have lived in my head. So you can imagine how easy it is to have written to you several times without you ever witnessing any of it. Nonetheless, I am sorry it has taken me this long to write to you about the dry tears that stained your last letter.

I did find the desk I went looking for. Writing and living many lives have taken a toll on my back, but I am receiving treatment for it. I was stubborn at first about getting a new desk—a standing desk. I always believed I only knew one way to write: at home, alone, at my desk, sitting, with soft jazz hovering, accompanied by the sound of rain, even on Beijing’s sunniest days. But I was wrong. Lately, I have been wrong about the many truths I once held close to my heart. 

Recently, the woman I told my mother I would marry, told her mother she was getting married, but not to me. She told me this over the phone when she stopped by the supermarket to pick up a new set of light bulbs for her bedroom. The one she had, the one I helped her change the last time I was at her place in Asokoro, did not last very long.

I suppose these things happen. Silly things like this happen, and all we can do is wrap our palms around our necks and force our faces, like clowns, to conjure a smile for their sake. Because we are supposed to wish them well, even if well does not share our company.

The young man you speak of, the one you wish to forget, may not be forgettable. We do not get over a person by simply wishing for it, just as a lie does not become the truth because ten people are willing to tell it. So tell yourself the truth, repeat it over and over again, and fill your room with it until there is no space for lies. Tell yourself that you want him, but he does not belong with you. Tell yourself that you want him, but he is not right for you—that you are not right for him. It is a large room, so do not stop yet. Tell yourself that he is here to stay, and that it is all right that you must now shelter him.

You have more than enough room inside you for all the men who will break your heart, all the men who will be gentle with you, and all the men whose hearts you will break—and the ones you will show grace. Fill your room with the truth until all the lies inside you that attach themselves to his words, the ones that want to believe the little acts of kindness that perch on your heart, wither and are carried away like dry leaves on a windy day. 

His longing for you means nothing. I, too, would want a woman anytime, without knowing much about her. It takes very little to want a woman, much more to accept that I need her, and everything to understand what it means for her to need me, too.

Take your time with all of it. Be afraid. Live with your fears. Understand what motivates them. Remember that your room is a large one, and you will have space to fall. Do not be in a hurry to forget him, for in doing so, you will forget yourself. He is a part of you now, as I am a part of you—and you, me.

I am happy to hear that you are enjoying Mieko Kawakami’s Heaven and Osamu Dazai’s No Longer Human. They are wonderful books. I have yet to decide on my next read. I printed the first samples of my book a month ago. Still unsure what to call it. I do wonder how many people will be happy to read more than a few letters and short stories from me. I am afraid. The thoughts of failure are in love with me. My dear father made sure of it, without knowing he was doing so, in his many ways of showing me love.

I still think about my love, another man’s wife, and the smile on my face, the wild drawn-out one, lingers. I am praying that hers’ is a comfortable marriage. I should get back to editing my book now. I wrote this while standing, before I could see the sun today. Though I hope you will read it in bed. I feel it settles better that way. I do not know how gentle you truly are. I only know that gentle words have a preferred residence.

Take care of yourself. 

Until I write again, Onyishi Uchenna