TO THE LADY WHO IS SLOW TO LOVE

by Chukwudi Ezeamalukwuo Okoye

I thought of her in the still dark corners of the night. I thought of her while lying on my bed, in that hour between turning and trying to sleep. I thought of her smile, the silence about her and the two months attempt at a relationship with her. The darkness enveloped me, and through its lenses I saw clearly her and me, and the differences that pulled us apart. She was a quiet girl who drew her words gently from the river of her thoughts, and I was a man that loved the sound of his own voice. On Sundays, she put on her best clothes, her pride and perfumes and a little extra care to attend to her religious duties, while I sat at home, hungover from last week’s controversies, debating the existence of the afterlife. She wanted us to take things slowly, wanted the kiss to be drawn out gently at glacial’s pace, but I never understood why love had to be placed on a calendar, and the dates spread across its hung pages to fill out the frustration of unfulfilled desires.

Love is hard, but I tried to love her. I tried to prune each day the overgrown flowers of my own individuality, chipping off here and there the rough edges of my personality just to fit in to her…but each day brought with it new trials, and with each trials went the eroded debris of my commitment.

“I want you my dear.” I said to her the first day she visited me. Holding her hands and gently stroking the fingers with mine. There is something about the caress of hands that has always fascinated me. The gentle tracing of the contours of the palm, the soft touch of the finger tip, the locking of our little fingers as we talked.
“I have always wanted you,” I continued, “From the first day I set eyes on you on the cab. Please be mine.”
No, she said – flat and straight. There was no mistaken the sting of that word. But her eyes lied, her heart beat faster and her lips wavered.  I could tell she liked me, I felt it in the way she touched me, I felt it in the warmth of her gaze upon me, how she smiled at my silly jokes, yet she would not set herself free and love me.

The last time I saw her, the last time I lay side by side with her, exhausted from trying and falling to plant a kiss on the garden of her lips, exhausted with frustration, unable to utter a word, just lying there like immense golden egg empty of albumen. And that time I heard her speak, I heard her say words that I would normally laugh out to, those words that normally got me launching into my litanies of argument, but that time I didn’t say a word. I only smiled that lazy smile that I smile to those women whom I had nothing in my heart for but sex. And then I realized that I was tired of this, of her. And last night as I ended the call, and lay there alone on my bed, turning and trying to sleep, I knew in my heart that it is over between her and me.

 

© Chukwudi Ezeamalukwuo Okoye

Ink15 — Imagine the Impossible