Yard Girl

                                     Let's pray Bow towards a holy land Weep on the walls of a holy city Let blood on a sacred ground Pin a staff by a riverbank Let's pray I've found a spot in a crumbling fortress I've made an altar on Mount Vulcan Let's pray Make it fervent, make it calm Make it subtle, make it fire Give me freedom, keep me bound Give me chaos, give me salvation Call me child then, make me the enemy Tie me down with a banner of peace Cuff me in chains and tell me "damnation"! When I seek Show me a path called mystery When I ask Give me a potsherd to ease my inquisition Almighty, all-being Divided amongst men Each brings a portion and call it only Each shows a path and call it true. Each way is upright, the rest, the fate of Babylon Each is just, all others are iniquity Let's pray That when I see, I'm forever lost That when I'm lost,...

Scenario: You, a pretty girl, intelligent, hardworking, you are regularly irregular. And you wonder, why am I still single? You are supposed to be with the LOYL at this stage of your life, but you are not. So, infinitely you have kissed a lot of frogs but your Prince charming has gone AWOL. What to do?? You meet this guy. Good looking, successful, will fit into your tik-tok videos, most importantly you don't have to make the first move, (at last someone who knows your worth) it is what you need. You vow to not fall in love so soon, you want to take your time to see if he loves you, you act mature and self-conscious around him but deep down you want to rip his clothes off and you literally worship the ground he walks on. Your friends have told you they don't trust your new man, (what do they know, enemies of progress) you've heard the rumours, your man is a Casanova, still you don't believe, his exes tell you to be careful, not to fall prey, but you thi...

E veryone who lived on Sixth Street was scared of the abandoned house, rumour had it that the owners of the house placed it under a curse, and the last family that lived in the house died mysteriously,  all found suspended from the ceiling fan in different rooms. Suicide!  I would boast to my friends that one day my dad would rent a house near the abandoned house and nothing would happen to us, I was thrilled with the mere fact of the house being supposedly haunted. So when dad announced we were moving out of our comfortable 3-bedroom apartment, I was super excited I'd thought my dreams were finally coming true. Our new house on the sixth street in front of the abandoned house was different, there was no running water, it had only two rooms which were a little too small, one which I now had to share with my sister, the parlor was the size of my former bedroom. It was uncomfortable, but dad explained, that he did not have enough money, so we had to manage the new tiny ho...

I hated washing Papa's car, it was the most stressful and frustrating of all chores, I chose to wash the dishes over the car, but papa would never let me, the most frustrating part was that he would make me wash the car over and over, it was an upbeat Volkswagen, it wasn't special but my old man valued it over us, his children. I washed the car, grumbling under my breath, papa stood outside, yelling at how ungrateful I was and how I'd missed a spot. He ordered me to wash the car for the next hour and went back into the house, I  thought he was bluffing. Immediately I heard the sound of his room door shut, I strolled to the mango and lay down on papa's ancient recliner.  Wham! Wham! Two missiles landed on my face. Papa shouted "stupid boy! I go inside for two seconds and you are the owner of the house?" I fought to hold back the tears, he went inside, I wasn't a bastard to continue resting, I got back to washing the car. Eguavon my cousin who came...

You know hot pepper soup, the type that makes you want to strip, the type that makes your tongue go up in flames literally. Yes, that one! I was in this pepper soup. I had just finished my exams and I was super excited, the semester had been stressful, I had lost weight, I looked like a hot mess, I really just needed a touch of home. I packed my bags, I was heading back home but not straight to my father's house. No, I wanted to be pampered not caged immediately, I was going to stay the weekend with the LOML before I got home. This was risky business, dad was almost always in Warri, but I didn't care, love they say is blind but mine was blind and was bound to land me in trouble. I suspected Loml was having an affair, so he spent the entire weekend proving to me how much he loved me, I foolishly believed him. I was high on cheap love. Even though he stepped out a couple of times to answer "strange" calls and I saw a female underwear that wasn't mine in t...

Heyyy ! It's been a exactly a month since my last blog post, pretty strange but it feels like months being away from the blog. Pewww! This month placed me in hard situations. A lot of accidents happened to my friends and I this month, which I will tell and retell in forthcoming blog posts. Top of the list is the Covid-19 pandemic, it all first seemed like a sci-fiction movie, like the one where an evil maniac creates a virus to wipe out humanity and we need superheroes like the Avengers to save the world, when I first learnt about the virus, and how everybody has to stay home to prevent the spread of the virus. The movie BIRD BOX played in head. Lol. Unfortunately this is not a movie, this is real, this pandemic has affected the whole world, lives have been lost, people have recovered (which is a reason to celebrate). The economy of different countries have been crippled, and with a country like mine, where we don't exactly have a flourishing economy, things have and are ...

She came as she was, born like every other and treated like every other. Nothing was special as everything seemed ordinary. She had this feeling that it wasn’t all there is, she felt there was more. She felt there should be more behind the mask she had seen everyone wearing. We all looked the same, but she was curious, you wouldn’t blame her right, would you?. All she wanted was to see what was behind the mask. Her mother wore it, her aunties wore it, even those before her. They all appeared comfortable wearing it. So she grew up wearing it too. She was made to believe the mask was part of their identity, that they couldn’t be unmasked. Like it was their birthright. But no! There should be more than meets the eye, so she thought. She went within her soul, seeking and searching for a way out. She had sought to know her real identity. At the ‘semi-woman’ stage, it became more profound, glaring her in the face that there could be a way out after all. She sought to know more ab...