busayoandwords

[busayoandwords]

CECILIA

I am looking outside of my window in February and I am remembering this time last year when the harmattan forgot to come. It rained instead. The little puddles and the softened ground made running on the field harder for me. It was already hard usually, even in the harmattan with the way the air is so quick and sharp every breath felt like your lungs were being sliced. I had felt like it was October, the time the boys practiced, in the rain sometimes, for the inter-house football matches that afternoon classes were cut short for so the whole school could come and watch. It didn’t feel like what was really happening- me practicing to run the 400 meters girls for yellow house. The weather sets the mood for certain things and damp cold is not very good for running.  

I chose not to run this year and not many people bothered to ask me why. I considered throwing javelin but I know I’m not very good at it. Even if I decided to try, I’m not sure I’d be given a real chance at learning it. The whole section of the sports field dedicated to learning to throw was over-run with boarder students. In my school, they have their own clique and world to themselves that they guard against the intrusion of day students like me. I could still go ahead and try but it could lead to a fight I’m not ready for. So I considered, and eventually chose to be a spectator.  

A while ago, on the bus, a boy held my hand and I was thrilled and terrified. The story of how that happened is another tale of me being absentminded and forgetting completely about myself while standing, or in this case, walking. Considering that I was in a totally new place, it was odd. I’m very wary about new places because I’m aware, from what my brother tells me often, that I am “ajebo that can lost at any point if care is not taken”. But my school took half the class of SS2 on an excursion to the stock exchange in Marina and I was lagging behind everyone else on the way back to the school bus because the whole place looked like a gloomier New York than the one I had seen in films.

I started playing a game in my head where I would guess, or rather give a life story to a person based on how they dressed or in what direction they were going. They couldn’t all be bankers or stock brokers or random 419 guys.

I was doing all this and suddenly I snapped out of it when I noticed a stranger leering and saying something to me in Yoruba. Then I realized that I couldn’t see any of my class mates ahead of me again, no gray uniforms anywhere.

I began to think: how did this happen? Had I taken a wrong turn without knowing it? Why did this happen to me? This is Lagos, I don’t know anywhere and I’m easy to kidnap because I can’t fight. I was probably panicking because I started moving up to strangers to ask for directions and they moved away as soon as they saw me approach. Maybe I shouldn’t have been crying so much because after I kept walking in a straight line hoping it would lead me in the right direction, I got to the stock exchange building and saw the white school bus parked nearby. Someone saw me and said “See her, she has come back finally”. My teachers were frowning hard at me. The only reason they didn’t scold me was probably because we were outside and they didn’t want to do anything to make the school look bad, that the teachers were harsh on the students or anything like that.

When I got into the bus, there was only one seat left and it was beside the time keeper boy. As I sat down someone said something about being worried that I would have been carried away by “some guys” like that.

I sat down and the boy beside me said

“Hey, hope you’re okay.”

I made some odd movement with my head that was both a yes and a no because I wasn’t sure how I felt. He nodded and looked away.

Somewhere on the trip back to school, in the traffic, the boy held my hand. I looked up and he had an odd smile on his face before he turned away. I turned away too and I felt how sweaty his hand was. I don’t like sweaty hands but I was too shy to pull out my hand even though I wanted to. It would look somehow, those sorts of things have social implications and I didn’t want to send off the wrong message.

Toju, a girl in my class, was staring at me when I turned away from the boy trying to think of something besides sweaty palms and the blunder of coming late to the bus. She was looking at me like I were evil and had done something wrong. I didn’t know if I should be worried, people gave me odd looks all the time and never bother to tell me why. I decided not to be, I had other things to worry about but from time to time I’d notice her giving me that same look all the way back to school.

   Short break is after English class on Thursdays, always eleven-fifteen in the morning. It doesn’t last up to twenty minutes but it’s enough time to go and buy something from the food kiosk. I like yogurt so I bought it. I could have asked a junior to do it for me, I’m now in SS2, but I’m not sure how to do it. It’s tricky, like rat-catching, what if you meet one that isn’t afraid of you and disgraces you in front of your mates? Rep gone. Just because you couldn’t pull a strong face and command respect. I usually go for break by myself.

On my way back to class, Erica and Moyo stopped me. They were linking arms and I felt my stomach knot up. Erica is Toju’s friend and Moyo follows them around. I think she’s trying to get into their clique but she used to be my friend.

Moyo said “Cecy, how far? I want to talk to you.”

It was odd that she chose to call me that, I wasn’t her friend anymore. My name is Cecilia but people mostly call me by my surname. Only people I’m close to shorten my name. I wondered why she was trying to be friendly.

“Where are you going now? Class abi?” she continued.

I nodded

“Ehn, wait first, I want to ask you something. “

“What?” I asked, putting my left hand on my hip, I was trying to look defiant. If you let them, boarder girls are rude enough to talk to you like you’re their junior. It has happened to me and some of my friends too many times, since JS1. Erica eyed my arm mockingly.

‘So I’ve been hearing some rumors about you” she said smiling. ‘But you know I’m your friend and I know you so I didn’t believe them. That’s why I’m coming to you now so you can say the truth and everyone can know’.

Then she put both hands on her hips. “Are you and Kolade doing stuff together?”

Kolade is the time keeper boy.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

They looked at each other in surprise.

“Why does this girl act like this? “ Erica asked. I think she was already getting angry. Moyo tried to sound calm. “See, I just want to know so I can help you. People have already started carrying your gist. Or you don’t know?”

“I don’t know” I said and I walked away from them. I think it might have looked like I was standing up to them by walking out like that but I was just scared and didn’t know what else to do except run away, but do it posing as a hard guy.

I heard them say “Ahan. This babe has issues sha.”

“Someone we are even trying to help, leave her”

 When I got home, I wondered if I should tell my brother what had happened. Talking about embarrassing stuff with him makes it feel less like a secret and maybe less painful somehow. He wasn’t at home when I got back. Maybe he was still at work, maybe he had gone out with his friends or maybe it was one of those times when he would stay out late and bring home a girl when he thought I would already be asleep.  

The last time he had brought someone over, it was a little earlier than usual and she was more beautiful than usual. She was fair, fairer than me and everyone says I’m yellow. Her lips looked like what those romance novels call a cupid bow mouth. My brother let me stay at the table while they had dinner together, she kept turning to look at me like she was worried or something, so maybe I was staring.

“Darling are you okay?” she asked me. I was surprised she was talking to me.

“Don’t mind her, she’s always acting like she’s shy around people. That’s how she does when she wants to sleep. She won’t say anything” My brother said laughing and putting his arm around the back of her chair. “Don’t worry you can go now’ he said to me.

I shook my head. I wasn’t ready to leave.

Then the laugh in my brother’s eyes dimmed a bit. “Don’t worry. I said you can go”. And then I understood. I got up to leave.

I understand these things even if I don’t say anything. I know why he wanted me to leave, I know why he brought her over to stay for the night. She’d be gone the next morning before I was even ready for school. I wouldn’t say anything because it is not my place, it is none of my business and those kinds of things scare me a little because I’m not yet sure what to make of them.

Everyone in school is paired up or switching the other half of their pair for someone else’s. I always hear the gist, even if it gets to me late. With all that my brother knew about this stuff I wondered if I should tell him about what was happening to me in school but what would he say? What was I expecting him to say? I had told my three closest friends.  Ada just told me about all the other gist that everyone else was spreading, I think she already knew about mine before because she said more about it than I had told her. I’m not sure how much I should trust her. Damilola listened quietly but her driver to pick her before I could even say anything.

Tayo was listening while I was telling Dammy. She said I should be careful because “those girls like looking for trouble and I’m sure they have their own secret that’s why they keep looking for other people’s own”. She actually said a lot of other things that comforted me. I thought about them while I was waiting for my brother to come back home, I wanted him to give me advice about what to do. With everything that Tayo said, she wasn’t able to do that. By ten thirty I decided to give up. I have a rule to never stay up beyond that during the week so I wouldn’t wake up late and get to school after assembly had started.

On Friday I was too afraid to tell anybody anything. I felt like the whole school was saying something mean about me so I was very quiet. I felt very sad. My friends kept asking me what was wrong while we were having lunch in the dining hall but I said “Nothing”. I think they knew but they didn’t want to offend me by asking it bluntly. I just wanted the day to end so I could go home for the weekend.

 It is Saturday now and the person I’ve been waiting for is finally standing outside my window. We are going to the hairdresser’s shop. She knows a few things about me and I know a few things about her. We’ve been walking to the hairdresser’s shop together since last year. Things were a lot simpler last year, I was trying my best to run for my house, I was still living on my old street with my parents, my report card was looking good and nobody cared about me so nobody was carrying my story up and down.

“How are you?” she asks

“I’m fine. How are you?”

“I’m fine, thank you. What hairstyle are you doing? “

“All back. That’s what they called” The hostel prefect is always calling one of two styles every week: suku or all back. No creativity.

“Which one are you doing?”

“I don’t know” she says shrugging. “When we get there”

We are walking and I am thinking about telling her how my week went. I know she’s decent enough to talk about these kinds of things with and maybe I’ll even ask what she would do in my shoes.

“So have you decided what you are doing for your house?”

“Oh” I had told her last week that I didn’t want to run anymore and I was considering what else I could do.

“I don’t know. Oh no… I’ve decided to be a spectator” I say with a smile.

“What’s that?”

“A spectator is someone-”

“No, I know what a spectator is. What I mean is, why did you choose that?” she looks me up and down. ‘You have long legs, try high jump nah”

‘I don’t know sha. That’s what I decided” I say.

She shrugs.

We get to the hairdresser’s and the chatty side of her comes out when the hairdresser greets her with “my customer”. She rarely calls me that and I think it’s because I don’t make any effort to be friendly towards her; I just want to plait my hair and go home.

The hairdresser is half way done with her hair. I always choose to go second because getting my hair plaited is painful for me and I always try to push it off for as long as possible. Also, plaiting my hair first means that I’m the one that has to wait for the other person to have theirs done and that wait is more boring than the wait of going second.

The girl I go to the hairdresser’s shop with goes to a public school. It is an army school so she tells me a lot about how they get punished a lot for the things I would get away with in my own school. Maybe this is perspective but she has it worse in a sense with all that punishment and crawling on the concrete floor on your knees. I don’t think I could survive that, my skin turns bright red even with mosquito bites. But she doesn’t have to deal with any of the stupid hierarchy I have to endure in my own school. From how she describes it, her set mates are a lot more cohesive than mine, I think I envy that a little.

Two women come into the shop.

They are laughing. One of them is talking about how her boyfriend had just bought her a new skirt to wear. She is holding it and hugging it to herself, singing about how her enemies have been disgraced for laughing at her. It’s funny, the other woman is teasing her that she likes men too much.

The one with the skirt says

‘Please oh, let me dance my dance. If you say I like man, that’s your own. Me I know what is true, my Demilade is number one and the only one. He’s a sure guy so let me enjoy him”

The hairdresser laughs and says something to the woman with the skirt about taking it easy with the enjoyment.

I’m smiling. I think I’ve found the advice I need. The woman with the skirt looks so happy. I’m sure she has a lot of people saying this and that about her like me but I don’t think she cares. I think what she said is true, that she knows what is true for herself. Maybe that is the key, that I should know the truth for own self and let that be enough. 

  ��/���

#story

[busayoandwords]

GLASS

You know, i’m kissing knuckles between blinks

And then i hear all the early morning sounds

Like a loud horn for the end of days

A cock crow to tell the time

Sometimes, eyes open, i see a picture

Glass stained, picture stained in glass

So pure that i feel tainted and torn open

A picture without words for all that i am

And morning dew clouds it till it becomes divine

My own breath condensing over making it more human

Till it becomes more window than picture

A clouded picture stained in a glass window

#poetry #morning glassWindows

[busayoandwords]

Intersection and Relativity

The ideas of intersection and relativity I used in writing maps are based on

-The relation (relativity) of the characters to one another.

-The intersection between a character’s story and that of another’s.

These ideas are not as complex or as far out as the story appears and it was one of those situations where you discover the idea while working on the field, in this case the field was writing out characters.

These characters intersect with one another in various ways and on multiple layers of meaning. They are made relative to one other in ways that allow their thoughts and behaviors to become more apparent to the reader. The writing is about the characters, most fictional writing is.

To illustrate this, I will use the device Neem used to put Boise in a lapse as a metaphor since that scene is what the story is pivoted by, what the story is about. In holding up two rectangle (Triangular in the real sense.) planes of glass, one is made to consider how white light behaves. It enters through the first plane of glass, becomes bent as it should, and then it goes on to pass through the second plane of glass, it bends again but this time white simple light is broken up when it comes out by all that bending into the fragments it contains; red, orange, yellow and all the others.

In a story relativity is like that, the reader in looking through the eyes of the character as it describes another. Relativity between characters was something I considered a lot in the making of M.A.P.S, something I am considering even now about the nature and complexity of writing about characters. Relativity is essentially how characters relate to one another. Or in the case of this story specifically, how one character describes another. I used a lot of this in my writing of M.A.P.S. An example is Tobi Ojo explaining the plot of the story almost entirely and even with that giving a rather incomplete perspective of the other characters (he can only know what he can see). But this adds texture to the story and in effect character development.

The deal with relativity is that as one character narrates its section of the story, in doing so it is letting on bits and bits of its own worldview. It cannot help doing so even with describing events or places or objects. There is a loss from the character in the form of private details about its own psyche however unwittingly.

There is a very important way this plays out in stories: a character has its own sometimes muddy identity and view about its own life, it is its own thing but when put side by side with another character there are a few modifications in its personhood/personality to fit into the situation of relating with another character (as it often is even in real life). However those subtle changes in those times is dependent on the character and whomever, or whatever, it is on about and they affect what will be said. It is like how in light bending through a prism at first it only refracts i.e when a character talks about itself or what it thinks or feels but when a character describes another, in having to explain the possible feelings and intentions locked in a personhood other than its own, it lets on about its worldview in greater detail. Whether that is by contrasting or cosigning the worldview of the other with its own; it is like light refracting and bending the second time to let on about the multiple colors it really holds.

Intersection is holding up two mirrors, not transparent glass this time, face to face, each in front of the other but where one stands to look into them isn’t in front of one with the other behind it but instead between them, to see that the image in one is the image of the other holding the image of itself, et cetera. It is all glass, transparent or otherwise.

Neem and Boise had similarities. In some ways their stories were parallels of each other. In the lapse that was created the intersections and intersectionality between these two characters can be seen. Where one character looks into the eyes of the other through the haze and sees similarities, a form of an image somewhere that shows it that what it thought of as other was linked to it in a way that held a familiarity that was so basic to its personhood that it had to wonder why it couldn’t see it in the first place. The intersection is it seeing the image of itself in the other in a way that mere descriptions fail to do.

�������n�x��

[busayoandwords]

M.A.P.S

I. SEA, SICK GIRL.

There is a sea and I want you to think of it like this: large, frothing and in motion. A thing stands at its edge and wonders at its own smallness, the finite life it has; a life that could end tomorrow, in a week or at the very moment it tries to speak and call out its own name to the waves. .

All of this is happening in evening light. With the way the sun sets behind the ocean, the thing thinks about drownings and how much the hue sunset casts on the ocean looks like its weak, sickled blood drowned in frothy sea water in motion. Rinsing the red off with its largeness till it goes from pink to orange to black.

Or should I tell you a story about a girl with wrists and other joints? She lived easy but when it got too cold her blood began to curdle and fold into shapes her veins could not agree with. So she would become rigid and her friends had to shake out of the frozenness of not knowing what to do and beg or barter her into motion of any kind.

Talk, do this or that, like her blood gave her a choice.

If you tap her wrists, swollen, you’ll see the shadows of columns of clots running the length of her arm. Iron-strong columns so she could barely move.

Don’t ask questions when this happens, she wished her friends knew, I know very little more than you do.

  II. T. OJO’S MONOLOGUE.

My name is Tobi Ojo and there is a market under the skin of our world. People had told me about it that it was closer than you’d think it was, just turn a certain corner and you’re there. I wanted to go. I wanted to go because a few people had gone there and told me that there was a person, or a creature, no one seems to be sure, that for the right price you could buy anything from.

Anything could be anything. A car, a phone even popularity. I wanted something other than that. I wanted to be able to control people because if you can do that you don’t have to worry about choosing only one thing like money or things. You can just get whoever owns what you want to give it to you because you can command them, that’s sense. You can command them to respect or like you. That’s what I really wanted.

I needed to go to that market but I couldn’t because I didn’t even know how to get there. Even if I figured out how to get there, how would I know where to find the guy that sells the stuff I want? How will I even know the metric the market uses to measure the value of items? I don’t think it will be normal currency, I mean it could be but I’m guessing it will be more like all those blood money stuff: a cow’s egg, hair from the sole of your mother’s foot, a goat with a red tail. That nonsense.

Since I didn’t know I decided to ask someone who likely would. Neem would know, she is a form and since the market is a place with dead things and smoke, she would understand it. Before I asked her, I wondered how she would take it that I was asking her, she’s not very easy to understand or predict being form and all. I was lucky, she said she was looking for a seal to ‘patch things up and silence her brothers finally’. Once in a while she would say things like that that I couldn’t make sense of but that’s the way she is.

She said she couldn’t make any promises to me because of her nature as form but if she couldn’t find what she was looking for in any of the doors she would open later on in my school then she might have to go and look for it in the market. I wouldn’t know till the day we were going if she’d let me tag along or not but I was just happy that at least there was a chance.

Later on, I’ll talk about what I saw in the market but right now I have something to get off my chest quickly. Don’t mean to be petty or anything but I don’t get why Neem allowed Boise to follow us. From the start I’ve known that guy as an annoying person. Always acting off point. Neem tried to explain something about ‘they’ve fallen into him so it’s through him they will be silenced.’ But that’s just another thing that she said that didn’t make sense to me.

Boise has always had some kind of issues but when he followed us to the market, I don’t know if it increased or if it was because he was so close to me that I just had to notice how bad it was. Another major thing that bothered me about this whole Boise issue was when Neem said I had to do something like interviews for him. That she planned to create something from him but she needed information about him so she’d know how to do it.

I asked her to try to do it herself but he told me that she couldn’t. I’ve learnt to not ask her why when she says she can’t do something because she tends to get moody and disappear for a while and I didn’t need that happening at this critical point since it’s so hard to predict when she’d come back.

I interviewed Boise in the end. It wasn’t fun since like I’ve said the guy is annoying. I acted all professional through it though and got all the information Neem said she needed. But I didn’t like doing it. The thing I used to motivate myself was imagining all the stuff I’d do after getting my stuff from the market. I’ll make some people pay, I’d get money and become a prefect. I’d do other stuff too and knowing that consoled me a lot through it

 III. BOISE + TOBI

‘Guy how far?’ Tobi said

‘I dey’ Boise replied

‘So what’s up now? Talk to me. What entered you that you started doing anyhow yesterday? It didn’t make sense now.’

‘Which thing?’ he remembers then lets out a hiss. “Guy free me abeg. I don’t know.’

‘Okay forget that one first. I said I wanted to show you something. Are you still interested?’

‘Show me’

‘I’m holding a picture now in my hand and there’s something I want to ask you about it.” Tobi said showing Boise a picture he was holding.  ‘Okay so…’ Tobi continued.

‘Wait, where did you get this picture from?’ Boise said suddenly, straightening in his seat.

‘Neem.’

‘How did she…?’

‘When I asked her, she said I should pick between two options, either that you gave it to her or she took it when you couldn’t know’

‘That one…’

‘What?’ Tobi asked

‘Don’t worry, I’m not doing again.’ Boise said ‘I’m out’

‘You can’t just leave like that’

‘Why not? I’m not interested again because I don’t understand what you guys are up to.’

‘Nope, it’s too late for that now. You’re already inside this thing too deep, deeper than you know, Neem told me. You can’t just get out like that.’ Tobi continued ‘Let me tell you, the best thing for you to do is to just play along. You know what I mean by play along?’

‘Guy how can you be talking to me like that? Don’t talk to me like I’m your junior. Are you okay?’

‘Guy calm down abeg. No need for all this one.’

‘Forget that one. Free me. I’m not doing again. I can’t be doing all this rubbish with you people.’

  IV. GOING TO SECONDARY SCHOOL

This one really happened. A ghost accompanied Tobi to his secondary school. It was running from something and in search of something else.

So Tobi and his unlikely companion were standing on a long balcony lined on its inside with doors. They were looking for what Tobi was hoping would not be found and the ghost began to open doors one by one.

It came to the ghost’s knowledge after two doors that each room was a mirror and it showed something different. Sometimes the image the ghost saw was a masquerade chasing young children, one room had a girl bleeding out her weak blood into the carpet. One was an empty shelf, fill it as you please. Some doors would not open. Tobi only saw himself and the ghost with its surprise when those rooms were opened. The ghost reasoned that it was because one cannot see what one does not know. It was thankful that Tobi could not know- or see- what the door that opened as a dark room with pulses of red flame was. The ghost did not want to know either, it would be irreverent to know because then if it knew it meant anyone else that could see would know.

It is not clear how it happened, maybe the ghost left a door unlocked, maybe it was meant to happen but a thing fell into one of Tobi’s classmates and it changed the fellow. Tobi heard it as a gunshot. Together Tobi, the ghost and anyone else who could hear heard a boy running out from between the school’s pillars and begin to scream:

 Skinless

I am left skinless. Naked

The Abiku has not returned, it did not stay

It took cloth and wove itself into form

It did not stay, it did not return

 What is family to spirit?

What is its torment but to be left to hang?

Brotherless, skinless, without shape

Because Abiku would not return, it did not stay

 Abiku would not return,

It would not stay

 It drowned its sickness in the sea

And died at the end of its voyage

Died to the voice of its brothers, their music

And would not return.

 Humanness is scourge to spirit, spirit scourge to humanity

So what is family to spirit?

What is form if Abiku be sprit?..

So Abiku cannot stay

But Abiku would not return.

            In all that babbling the ghost heard its name and it began to think, oh no, but it chose not to complete the thought.

  V.   IN CONVERSATION; TOBI AND BOISE

‘I’m glad you decided to come back. Let’s start this afresh.’

‘Sure. No problem’

‘Ehen. I heard that you’re turning rogue small-small.’ Tobi said with a smirk.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You know now. From last time. This one that you’re now snapping picture with babe.’

Boise stiffened. ‘Is this what this is about? Is that why you called me back? Don’t tell me you’ve started again...’

‘No now. I’m just trying to lower the tension.’ Tobi said laughing. ‘You are looking tense’

I’m not tense. I’m fine’

‘Okay, so you’ll answer my question now?’

‘Is that not why I came here?’ Boise replied

‘So now, the questions I’m going to ask you are somehow personal. Hope you don’t mind?’

‘I don’t know, depends on the question but continue’

‘Okay, so now I’ve noticed something about you. It seems like you’re always tense not just today’

“I’ve told you I’m not tense I’m fine. Do I look tense to you?’

‘I get. I get honestly but for real from what I’ve been noticing I’m starting to think it is something deep. Like, I’m guessing you have problems at home and I’m seriously suspecting it is your father.’

‘My father? I don’t get. Why are you asking me this?’

‘It’s just something I noticed. Will you answer me though?’

‘Answer what?’ Boise asked

‘About your father. Just tell me what you think of him, no pressure.’

‘What can I say? He’s my father. He’s okay I guess.’

‘Okay. I get that but you’re not giving me what I need to know.”

‘What do you need to know?’ Boise asked

‘Now let me ask it this way. Would you be cool with it if you ended up like your father when you grow up?’

‘Hmm. Not really’

‘Can you tell me why?’

‘He’s very harsh somehow and that tends to drive me away from him.’’ Boise said. ‘I try to avoid him sometimes and I don’t really have a very good relationship with him.’

‘For real? How bad is it?’

‘Sometimes I have to leave home so I can get peace of mind, especially if I do get into trouble or do something he doesn’t like.’ Boise said. ‘Just have to leave all that stress sometimes.’

‘’But now, with how he tries to stress you has there ever been a time you got into trouble that you decided to stand up to him?’

‘Yeah’

‘Wow. How did that go?’

‘Not too well.’ Boise said laughing. ‘I don’t really like talking about that stuff though”

‘Why not’ Tobi laughs then adds, ‘was it about a girl?’

Boise lets out a hiss. ‘Forget that one. Do you have another question?’

‘Yeah. Do you love him? Your dad’

‘Of course. He just has his own issues. And again it’s somehow… it’s just somehow’

‘Do you think he could have been a better father?’

‘Definitely’

‘Okay, I think I’m done now?’

‘Seriously? How come it was only stuff about my dad you asked me?’

‘That’s what I wanted to know’

‘I know why. Neem put you up to this. No problem, they’ve already told me that they’ll drag her by the cloth she took from them back to beyond the sea’ he added, ‘They know and they’ll take her back.

‘Guy, “Tobi said hesitating, ‘what did you just say?’

‘Nothing. You said you were done here now. So can I leave?’

‘Yeah, sure. No problem.’

   VI. MOONLIT BOYS

Once, there were boys. The boys woke up and whistled into the moonlight. It looked like their hands were threading the notes in their throats back up a moonbeam and into the sky.

There was insistence and continuity in their standing in a circle, each weaving fabric that was part music and part moon-thread. Together as ownership. This is one way bonds are formed.

After their moonsong, one of the boys sat on the blue grass and held part of his offering in his hand. He had become cancer to his continuity. Alone as thief. This is one way bonds are broken.

Another way is to run to the shores of your world and commit yourself to the waves of insanctity. To commit to entering a bloodline so as to commit to a circle of death and being born to die again. To weave cycles of broken bonds with sparse moon-thread. To be conjurer and conduit and night-time marauder.

Another way is to be a man. A man born as witness into such broken bonds. To be the proof of it.

Another way is to be a boy. To be a boy with the pink knocked out of you before it could bloom. To not wish for any kind of blooming as a boy. To have the breaker of your bloodline quieted yet still be another witness to bonds broken and woven with sparse fabric. To not be aware of the start of the circle.

  VII. ENTRANCE INTO THE MARKET

The way to the market was actually very simple.

Before we got to that point, I was letting Neem lead us into the market because she was the one that knew the road. If I had known the road was so easy to understand, I don’t think I would have let her join me. The only reason I let Boise go with us was because Neem kept talking about needing to fix something about him that it might have been our fault that he had started talking weird like that. I don’t know about that though.

But seriously, the road was so simple, I should have known without anyone telling me. People had already told me that the market was very close, that it was “under the skin of our world”. I should have guessed it would be under the skin of our market too. All we had to do was turn a corner in one part of the town market like this where they sell all those weird roots and snails and all those kinds of things. It was predictable in a way. The market women around that corner looked older than all the ones we had seen in other parts of the market and they had all those weird green tattoos.

When we turned the corner, I was happy because I was finally in the market. I was finally there. I had heard so many rumours about what it would look like and so when we turned the corner, I was surprised at what I saw. The first thing I noticed was funny somehow.

It’s like we weren’t the only ones that turned that corner. Two old women like this were walking behind us. They were holding baskets, those olden day baskets that are made of raffia or something. One of them had grass in her basket or one kind of vegetable, I don’t know the difference. The other one was holding a basket filled with sand. Like, legit sand.

I started thinking maybe they were witches because I don’t even know where they came from; they just appeared. They appeared out of nowhere and one of them was holding a basket filled with sand and it wasn’t pouring out; it didn’t sound right. I wanted to call Neem to come and see what I was seeing.

Then they started singing.

So, for real, I was sure I only saw two women when we got into the market and just like that they multiplied. They were dancing and singing in a circle and there were at least seven of them. They were even wearing all those olden day red aso-ebi and they looked younger, not like those old women I first saw.

Me I was very scared and amazed too. Like, the song was somehow sweet. They looked happy and sad at the same time. How can I explain it? It was like they were celebrating at a funeral somehow. Not like they were the kind of witches that killed someone’s father but like they were celebrating all the good things that death had taken away because death didn’t cancel the value of those things.

I don’t know though. That’s how it made me feel.

The women in the circle walked out of it march-past style and they became two women again both of them old. One of them was suddenly backing a baby and they just continued and entered the market as if nothing had happened.

I felt sad. Neem was beside me, she had stopped walking too to watch the old women. Then she told me that the market was full of tricks so I should be careful. I wanted to ask her if she knew about what had just happened and that was when I noticed that she wasn’t dressed as a girl anymore, she was draping the white wrapper she had worn over herself on the day she followed me to my school.

With the way she looked, her skin so dark and ashy compared to the white fabric and the way I couldn’t really see her eyes, I didn’t think I could call her a she anymore. She looked more like an ‘it’.

I wanted to ask how she suddenly changed her clothes but she just told me to follow her and keep an eye on Boise. She kept walking and didn’t even wait for a reply.

We walked a little way and it was like the road opened up to us. Like a book had been opened or curtains had been drawn to the side. Then I saw mud houses. I didn’t expect the shops to be made out of actual mud.

We got into one of those shops, Neem lead the way as usual.

I’m not entirely sure what Neem did but I had trusted her. She said it was necessary, that that was what had to be done. I didn’t want to follow through when I finally saw how serious the thing was. I thought it was a joke at first. Like why was Boise screaming so much? Then I saw that it was actually serious and I started getting scared. I didn’t want her to continue because it was looking dangerous and it wasn’t what I had expected.

I tried to make her stop but the way she hissed at me, I was shocked. Like it was one nasty hiss, like the one you’d expect from the devil. That’s when I realized I didn’t really have a say in this anymore like that. She was going to finish what she had started whether I liked it or not. And I don’t think I liked it.

   VIII. ROOM

Imagine a room with all the features of something that existed as an upside down parallel to the world you’ve always known. Imagine the features as dusty and with the beginnings of rot.

Now imagine the people that could be in such a room- a growing boy, a wondering boy and a form that had once been a girl and before that was part of a commune a sea away from our world.

Can you imagine what they would be doing, together, in that room? Can you imagine the urgency that would have been in that room? Can you imagine who else would have been in that room? Or who opened the door to let them in?

Or who asked for a chair to be brought out so that someone in a fever could be tied up? Or who began to yell and scream and accuse? Or who entered a lapse through a pink opening? Or who was given options, three of them?

Or who was scared through it all?

 IX. LIAR. LIAR. LIAR.

A boy glows pink in a fever. Spits rubbish words out too.

Before that, he had been spoken to and spoken of.

But have you heard the start of his own story? Without lineage, ties or form? A boy as a boy.

Growing up boys have to learn their own limbs. Without quiet, without promise of progression. With no siren as guide. And fathers are the fiends of boyhood, they perform hauntings and exorcisms on dreams. They drain out the daylight’s colours. They filter it through their own beliefs of manhood till a boy is left in darkness at daybreak.

Then they return light as one turns on a lamp but the residue on the filter is their own, and their sons’, pink hues to be discarded and forgotten. It is for the best. Sons should learn to thank their fathers for the sacrifices and scarifications they make.

On that paper, discarded, is the pink.

The pink is youth, the pink is a fever (the connection to Neem, form). The pink is what was taken from boys, Boise, boys to growing. The pink is sex. Or the growing into it.

On that note, in a room under, one could hear him scream.

‘Liar! Liar! Liar!’

And his captor told him to be quiet.

‘You’re a liar! I hate you! What do you want from me?!’ he was allowed to speak and scream until he said

‘I know what you are. I know your real name. I know Neem isn’t your real name. Why a tree? Is that why you chose that name? Is that the type of tree you buried your- ‘

As an assault, or a spell but the boy was made quiet. Held down through his fever into something that his assailant –or charmer- called a lapse. It said to him

 These are your instructions

- Hold up two parallel rectangles of glass

- Watch the spectrum that comes through

 It is only the foetal pink that matters

Bend with it.

Bent as you are, you’re the only real thing.

Don’t let the colours deceive you

This is a lapse

Into trichrome options, where will you end?

- A refugee of love

- A splendid hue

- A thing with a badge to it

This is where you can only see in parallels.

It is not a world, it is the world,

You are the cast, the image of it

An open wound, a fear away from life.

 The cast of the image of a world is a sea. Cleaned through with daytime’s sun. You could see the boys, boys with fathers, with brothers, with their dark skin glittering with sea salt, sweat and sweetness.

At the coming, wholes in that world were shattered into circles, functional communes with fragments eternally seeking to break further and at the same time rebuild the wholes, re-open circles and clean them.

Boise in that world was no stranger.

Boys have watched communes fragment at the grief of incompleteness. Marauders break off to go and break things. A child was born out of the sea and chose to never return or reply. Boise had Neem standing on the outside of her brothers’ call and through the haze he saw how her story begun and fit closely to his own running. He thought, aren’t all running-froms all the same?

     X. EPILOGUE

It is the visceral longing for home that we call a sickness when it scares us. A patch of forlorn feelings we shake off in the daylight. People don’t speak of it too soon or too often. You don’t want to look weak. You don’t want to question its nudging force. You want it to go away. Like an unwanted dream.

This is a very human thing. But humans are part spirit too. They know this idea like they know pain, it is something that can only be experienced not explained. What about what spirits think of this? Do they know it like humans do or are they able to go further and understand the call to home?

What about spirits that had been pushed into the human line as punishment of some kind and had become form. What do they think of it? After becoming human then dying into spirit then existing as displaced form, which side calls them to home?

If we should end this story, we should tell about what happened to the ghost and the boy after it had been called a liar. That fever was a shared thing and when the ghost led the boy into the lapse, they both had trichrome options and it cannot be said which was harder for either of them.

The ghost’s options were;

-          Return to your brothers as skin

-          Die as spirit

-          Desist from form and take up the flesh of the boy as owner.

All of these options involved death of some kind. The ghost thought of the tenderness and weakness it had when it was a girl, about the torment of its brothers and then it looked in the haze of the shared fever through the boy’s eyes and wanted his life. It also pitied the boy and his own torment by his family.

The thing about pain is that it can unify the most unlikely of creatures. At least, that is what the ghost said to itself as it ripped itself at the cord out of the boy, out of the haze and out of where its brothers would ever know to call it. It did not want to admit the humanness and tenderness of sparing the boy. It looked too much like love and where could spirits know to find such?