It’s not only
about a corner table in a nice restaurant with that bottle of wine you injured
your atm card to buy. I know; we all look beautiful in candlelight, I know. But
Love is not only about this, the sides we turn to the camera, pouting in ways
that persuade others to organize elaborate evenings all in the hope of snagging
a kiss at the end. Me too, I know how it is, to sit distracted through dinner,
wondering if all this eye gazing and finger grazing will amount to anything tonight.
But Love…is not only about this.
It is not only
about crying yourself to sleep. Please, do not lie to me, with your bullshit
talk about how nobody can ever make you cry. I tell you, a broken heart (if
your heart was truly in it) is worse than the sting of an unexpected slap. And
the sting of an unexpected slap is one thing that never fails to dislodge a
tear. But Love…is not only about this.
Or the levels of
self-humiliation we are willing to descend to in the face of their reluctance
to say ‘yes’, or their determination to say, ‘no more!’ Ah, these are private matters,
you know, the number of times we check their facebook page each hour for clues.
And though we come out, lift both hands and swear it never happened, behind the
same doors we burst through to tell our lies – God knows – we’d been down on
both knees begging to be taken back. But Love…is not only about this.
Tell me. If you spent
a bit of almost every night of your years at Uni leaning against the hostel
wall, gisting – in fact, growing up – with the same three guys, and now, even
though Time has put cities and careers between you all, you will still never
fail to answer that call – is this not Love?
Tell me. If you
are alone only because you’ve been asked to pay a price for companionship that
made you think of your father, how he used to sit out in the evenings with your
mother, and the ease with which the night – when it finally fell – settled in
the spaces between them; so that, now, you cannot help telling anyone who asks,
“If I cannot have this, then, let it be” – is this not Love?
For the sun
rises because of its love of adventure, and sets because of its love of the
night. And the iroko bends because of its love of the wind, and straightens up because
of its love of the sky. Do you think this is only poetry? That a woman’s nose
will double in size, and she will spend miserable mornings with her head half
down a toilet, that her bones will creak with the weight of a child whose
tumultuous entrance into this world will split her open in soul-trembling pain,
and yet once she puts its lips to breast all things, all things are forgotten? And
you think this is only poetry?
No! True, I have
not found a more prolific muse. From the way it makes us giggle at absolutely nothing,
to the courage it gives us to be ourselves, to give ourselves to causes others
have since abandoned; Love is that inspiration long enough to go round the
equator, tall enough to reach to the Artic and down to the Antartic, to stretch
to the moon and keep going. And if Love starts telling stories just as we get
to Pluto, it would still be talking when we reach the edge of the known Universe…
But do not despair, my friend, for with this poetry, we shall keep up. With it,
I swear, we will follow…
Main Auditorium.
National Centre for Women Development. Central Area. Abuja.
Dike
Chukwumerije Live on the 14th of Feb 2016…
Get your
tickets.
Image taken from:
http://www.awakening360.com/content/images/articles/1874.jpg
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