Notes For A Shedding On A 30th

It is two (2) days to my birthday and I do not know what I feel right now. I feel something alright. It is just really difficult to put it into words.

I do not know how I will spend my birthday. Not yet. I have no plans even now. 30 is an important number for me. I do not even know why it is so, but I feel like it is going to be an important number in my years. I should do something, anything, to make it count.

Earlier this year, I had drawn up a plan. I would make my entry into my 30th several life-pounds lighter than I have been the last 30 years. I would shed most of my life-weight. And I would go on an adventure all through the months preceding my birthday. I would pack up a bag every weekend and go somewhere, anywhere, until my diary entries are filled with memories and places.  I would visit obscure rural villages in Nigeria or Ghana or Cameroun and be the guest child of the loneliest widowed woman in the village, to be the friend of the unluckiest child or the outcast, the miss-fit in every such village I will visit.

It is 2 days to my birthday and I haven’t gone anywhere, or met anyone, yet.

It appears that the physical ceremony of shedding my life-weight is the only thing I will be doing. For this, I have already sorted and evaluated all my physical life possessions and out of everything, I will be giving most things away save few essentials.

I had toyed with the idea of saving only 30 items of my life’s possessions and doing away with everything else but I had hit an indecisive brick wall. What constituted ‘an item’? For example, I own a collection of treasured books in my miniature library, chief of which is my international passport and my bank’s check books.  In saving ‘an item’ from my library, do I pick out only my Passport for example and give out everything else? Do I tag my library as one item and save it all? At the end of my deliberation, I decided I would simply take out objects that I did not necessary need or use, or objects, ideas, people, habits, hobbies and relationships that were hurting, stagnating and or negatively impeding  my growth and goals.

Two weeks ago, I had visited an internally displaced person (IDP) camp in Kuchingoro(?), and decided that will be my physical location for a shedding.

I have begun the sorting of my last 30 years.  I have begun shedding my weight to appear lighter for my next decade and this may hurt at first, but I am strangely confident that I will be better for it.

Lie To Me

When my gloom curls up ,
forming rings around my heart,

And my words spread the pain that ensnares my being;

Lie to me.

Tell me happiness starts first as a sadness.

Tell me this thing I feel isn't real.

That none of it is real.

Tell me None of this is real.

A Dirge For Tarty

They say every new birth (day)

lays a nail With which our coffins are set.

As the clocks chimes a melody for a 30th

Shall I sing a dirge for Tarty?

A Sneer At Death

Not all of us are afraid to die.

Some of us do sneer at death in the face and ask him rudely if the best he could do was a lump or a clot or a failed kidney.

Because death? Your ways have always been cowardly, so even when I cry because you were coming or you had come to take what was mine; my tears had always pitied you instead. Because you are a retched cowardly trifling bitch!

Signed: A pissed of Mom.

Futile Things.

'What do you really want from me?' The man asked the girl.

'I want to fall in love,' the girl replied.

'I cannot give you that. I can give you a restricted form of companionship, but you can never fall in love with me' the man finished, his brows, beat.

The man had often thought the girl had a fertile mind, but this was futile. From experience, he also knew somebody always ended up hurt when people wanted futile things as realities.

He owed her the truth.

Loss

A man loses a wife, he is a widower.

A man loses his parents, he is an orphan.

But when a parent loses a child, there is no word for it, and there shouldn't be. Parents shouldn't have to bury their children. You can't really put that pain into words. 

I am imagining that repairing the human heart may somewhat look like repairing a broken automobile. 

You put everything apart. Cut through thick flesh, or bolts. Shred it well enough, and put it back together.

But broken hearts really stay broken forever, don't they? How do you mend a broken heart?

Debuting Pain

I had recently encountered pain, you know, the sort of pain that stays with you for days on end, that sticks on you like a stench?

I had recently encountered pain, and this is how pain looks like on some mornings.