Flash fiction | It Has No Name by Nana Sule | The Arts-Muse Fair
IT HAS NO NAME
BY
NANA SULE
There is something that starts walking
inside your throat. It drags with it, all the emotions that you own. Except
that it forgets to pull along the happy ones. That is why you hold on to the
smile on your lips, you hold on because there isn’t much to do. This thing,
eating at your heart, it must have a name.
Outside, there is rain. It drums
violently on the roof and crawls through the small leak in the ceiling, just on
the right side of the kitchen. When the rain first came, Samira and yourself
had pushed the cooker a bit to the side. Then an orange bucket was placed
beside the cooker. Now the insides had dark rings from where water had
overstayed. Kind of like your heart, from where doubt had overstayed and have
now become clarity. Dark clarity.
It is on this rainy day that you fold
all the senses you own in a neat pile, lock them somewhere behind your head
where you wouldn’t reach. It is on this night that you make what you know she
loves. The kitchen is dressed in goat meat scent. This scent is shared by the
dinning where the pepper soup nestles in a warmer. You throw in an extra with
the candles and a juice. Glasses set, spoon set, and you, set in waiting.
You check your phone again. Even as
your eyes dance to the door and back. There is no call missed, no message
unread. So you send another one.
You: Waiting
for you baby
A minute goes by, you tell yourself how
she might not have seen it. Perhaps she is packing her things and getting to
the car in the rain. It is why five minutes later, you tell yourself how she
must be driving, how she would be more bothered about concentrating than her
phone.
Some twenty minutes later, lest the
pepper soup get cold, you send another.
You: Where
are you.
Then
you call.
You call again because, she just might
not have heard the first ring.
From behind your head, the images you
have locked away start to escape. One would be your Samira. It would be at a
time when, excited about a watch some colleague sold to you, you had driven all
the way to the hospital. You had not bothered to knock, why ruin the surprise.
So when you saw Dr. Samira inscribed on the door, you pushed it open, never
minding that you may have met a naked patient. Now that you try not to think of
it, it would have been better than seeing her lips locked on another’s.
Although at that time, you were screaming, you could not be heard. Because
somewhere in you was a shattered heart, one that hurt so bad, its pain was
stuck in silence. So you did not ask who he was, or why there was a them. You
left, lest they heard how your heart beat had turned uneven and louder.
That night, you cuddled next to her.
You tried not to think about the slight red on the fair of her neck. You did
not believe it could be a love bite.
You: Hey,
I am getting worried
Not worried, scared.
Perhaps he was more than you could be.
Perhaps you are just not enough.
Her: Sorry,
just seeing these.
I won’t make it today, there’s an
emergency surgery.
It’s bad.
Don’t stay up for me.
You stare at this message. And you are
suddenly unsure if you saw her wear that red bra or not. If she put on a little
bit of make up or not. And because you have now laid yourself on the cold tile,
you wonder how he is keeping her warm. You wonder if she would moan like that,
if he would be for her, what you are. Or if he will be more.
There, as you lay on those tiles, you
argue with your senses. There must be a thing you are doing wrong to deserve
this. It must be your fault. There must be a name for this thing that you are
feeling. For the way that you are dying. It must have a name.
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Nana Sule is a contributing writer at The Arts-Muse Fair. An Environmental enthusiast, her writings have appeared in blogs. She is the Coordinator of the Minna Book Club and tweets @izesule.
Great! Permit me to add this work to the literature blog www.litblognaija.com
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