OVERDOSE

Life never gives you what you want, it expects you get it and leaving nothing to chance. These are the wise words that manage to escape into the zephyr whenever Sammy and I engage in a schmooze and serious conversation. He says life is a game for gamblers; my conduct must have made him perceive I was love-struck and lovesick. But then, I knew gamblers had the fundamentals in excelling in their chase because of the word, “spirit” – just something I wished I did not know; such knowledge you wished did not come in the lissom form of a reminder. “Sammy forget that tale, it has ceased to be a titbit; just a normal crush, it will fly away like a frightened dove in no time”.  These were the escaped fuel from the fuel regulator; words that never saw eye-to-eye with my prefrontal lobes; words so risible that my molars tried chewing back. I thought I was sincere, I thought it was the usual crush-no-crush routine; I only felt the need to take to it like a duck to water. I failed today; her smile was just the gentian. The spirit of leaving love cues with broken back probably did not envisage the arrow of Paris bloodily relaxed in my heel. “You sure the mushy feelings for her has hit the rocks?” This was just the day after; Sammy was not going to stop with the profusion of questions. One mendacious comment from my end was an invitation for a stretchy cross examination. My dishonest lips had gone in a trice dryly and for want of lotion, I told him the gospel. “I think she still hovers around my attic”. Sammy kept talking about being gutsy. He had just enough words for a motivation, but if he understood the obsession I underwent months back because of the same Contessa, maybe he would have relieved the albatross around my neck.

When it is about thinking of my status, all I see is a boy compelled to sit on a chair to swallow up pills of uncertainty. The only challenge is in making you see the imagery – the image of a lost soul weeping profusely until blood, albeit a smidgen, managed to escape his clogged nostrils for the singular reason of being deprived tending and food for months. I thought I was bulletproof, but these days I keep bleeding. Last night I was with Martins, and for the very first time we had a deep conversation. My heart became too mature for an abortifacient, I was quick to say her name. Martins spoke like a professional. “Just tell her how you feel; you do not have anything to lose”. Oh please, was that not easier said? If I were to follow him ad verbum, who cannot say, “I love your eyebrows, it beautifully slopes down like a good dive; I snuggle your pearly whites, it captures the entire light in a spectrum; I craze for your bright eyes, it is a source of my poetic justice; I loved you only without that “D”, you are a dickens.” But then, this episode is not tractable. She wants a career, she is goodness, she is principled, she is that salt for man’s existence, she is cuter than the moppets in your favourite movie I do not care a hang to rethink, and her smiles could leave you rat-arsed in need of such belabour but the burden I have unwillingly borne, like Ephialtes of Tranchis from Sparta who was too weak to raise his sword owing to his hunchback, is due to the easy smile of hers but of no marginal enigmatic tendencies. Sometimes, I become a scatterbrain when I try to evaluate where I stand in Love’s food chain. Babe says, “Never think for a woman”. I wonder how I managed not to ask her if that was even within the path of feasibility. Opening up to people is now vapid. It is now herculean for them not to tow the usual line of “Stop making up excuses”. I stay shrugged whenever they consider my muteness a scattershot approach to making her see hidden algorithms – feelings I once nursed in my heart to be as patent as bloodstains on snow. But what if my excuses knew justification? What if I had valid grounds to refuse Love’s emotional right to visit and be gone in a trice? If I could say DAMN like Kendrick until my throat aches and my eyes beep pulp, maybe they would understand that the route to her heart has remained classified. On a meticulous muse, maybe there is nothing to savvy. They remain justified to hold as truth their positions, albeit inexorably, because I have erred in discerning that if I must resist false evidences against reality then I must begin my exodus. I tell her in my dreams that we are plant with two leaves at germination but my reality sees a belle walk gracefully with diligence emblazoned deep down her arteries – diligence her watchword. My reality sees a bloke befuddled at the mysteries her gaze offsets and suggests I relish. Will it be considered a warp that I have taken to her eyes adventure at the expense of the procreation of the banal three words? I am plagued with buffering emotional steadiness; I need no doc to tell me the cure to my malady. She is lucidly the panacea to my migraine; I wish I were uncertain about her centre of influence in my noisy dog-eared red heart.

Fundamentally, I need my breath, and I need to feel my lungs. It is not beyond my ken no more that there is a cure to my imbroglio. The beast is rumoured dangerously marked, but my fealty will be to wear the cloak of an intrepid spirit. I can only know bruises if the whips at my rear are grievous, but I will not break. She had me take overdose; my obsession is boundless. The double-back is now. It is an acceptance of limitations. I wish there was an escape path but I must address reality with a fine tooth comb – the obsession is too grievous, it matches the whips even; your smile is what makes me stronger, it fills me up. I fear my adventure will be unrequited. But if it will make the excess pills take a chill pill, is it not worth an embraced challenge? The feeling is as living things, it must know growth before death. This is currently the progeny of my love episode; it either ends as a melodrama or Shrek’s connubial connection. She probably has not noticed me, maybe I am supposed to paddle her or be her river with no need to obtrude. “You have my temple experience flames”. These are words that come naturally whenever I muse on life’s puzzles. When those expressions unwrap like pilled corn, there is usually the impossibility that I may segue into other spheres of life. She has me enwrapped; in two breaths, I love you.
©OKOCHA OBED