Goodbye August

Goodbye August

This Morning

This morning, the clouds are heavy. No — not a little heavy, but swollen, sagging, their burden too much to bear. And so they break, crying in long grey showers. Most heavily.

A girl I know once told me, with the innocence of a dove, that I pronounce “heavy” with my thick Igbo accent. She didn’t say it to mock me — no, she’s a dove, and doves don’t mock. Still, whenever we speak and the word threatens to rise on my tongue, I pause. I hold it like a hot coal, waiting, careful, lest my accent betray me. Why? I don’t know. Perhaps it is my subconscious refusing to be laughed at, even softly. Or perhaps it is the old wound of my grandfather, who at eighty-five returned to sit in JSS2 and endured the cruel laughter of those who could not understand a man daring to learn at that age. Maybe it is his shame that echoes through my throat, making me hesitate. I don’t know.

But I do know this: the skies are heavy this morning. Heavy as if they too mourn the slow departure of August.

And August — ah, August was a season of contradictions. It gave me new faces, some beautiful souls I met off here. It fed me well, it let me read more, fuck more, sleep more, even breathe more.

One sunny afternoon, while watching a Christian video, I felt something divine touch me, like a hand brushing over my chest. I waved it off. God cannot manifest through unbelievers, I told myself. But why did I wave it off? Maybe because He has not yet given me what I asked Him for. Maybe I bargain with the heavens: do first, then I will believe You. And until He does, no divine sensation can rival the first cold kiss of Heineken on the lips, sliding down the throat, moonwalking into the chest, setting the whole body alight. That pleasure — ah! It is like losing your virginity again, only this time sweeter, more tender, most tender.

Yes, August was good. I will not lie. But it would have been better if my father had finally said, “I love you.” Hehe. I am a hopeless believer in impossibilities. My father telling me he loves me. Manchester United winning the league. Impossible things, yet I stupidly believe. Call it the curse of a hopeless believer.

This morning, a thought came: write a book of essays, anything and everything, and publish it on your birthday, eighteen days from now. As is my way, I have already begun. Yet even as I write, fear whispers: you won’t finish. Continuity is my oldest wound. It is why my ex left. Why the one before her left. Not the whole story, no, but enough of it. I have always been able to start. It is finishing that terrifies me. But I will try. This year, I have been trying.

I have tried many things. Things I cannot even name here. I tried getting a tattoo once — sat in the chair, felt the needle buzz in the air — then I imagined my skin filling with ink until no inch of me was untouched, and I fled the shop. I walked out of church one Sunday while my own father was preaching and never went back. I leave things easily. I carry little sentiment for anyone or anything. And that scares me, I won’t lie.

Perhaps I have loved. But what is love, if not the losing of yourself into the other? Sometimes I doubt I ever have. But then I think of my mother. That one is certain: I love her. My siblings too, those annoying little creatures, less annoying now as we grow old together. And even my father — God knows how — I love him, in the strangest, most twisted way. I wish I did not, yet I do. So maybe I am not all logic and no heart, as someone dear accused me of yesterday.

Still, this month someone called me a narcissist. That was new. I’ve heard nonchalant, wicked, evil, even emotionless. But narcissistic? Please. I was not narcissistic when I went down on you — a decision I deeply regret, because the stench that rose to meet me was less than palatable. If I could do that, then how am I a narcissist?

Labels do not move me. Not “evil,” not “nonchalant,” not “narcissist.” Only two names strike blood: “rapist” and “scammer.” For those, it is gloves off.

The rain has stopped now. It is as if the sky waited for me to bleed on the page before it could finally let go. Now, emptied, it rests. Just as my ex once made me speak of my wounds, dragging them out of me, only to shrug in the end and say: “Sorry, I’ve moved on.”

If you had moved on, why ask about me? Why turn my struggle into your pornography?

But it doesn’t matter anymore. Like August, like the rain, it has passed. And here I remain — fine, or at least pretending to be. Like always. Like my father pretending he does not love me. And yet — in some impossible way — he does.