Friendship

Quite simply, I love myself enough to only love those who love me the way I love them.

I love you because you have mastered the ability to lovingly mirror back reality to me in a way that keeps me conscious of the events and people who surround me, without shattering MY own little world. That is what is important to me. To be able to live in my world, away from the cruel, harsh, unforgiving realities of everyday life. And to work on loving myself, attaining my own definition of success, and if not changing, at least making some sort of impact on the bigger world around me.

Long distance love

"I think I love you too much". And it scares me because with every fight that occurs I see myself stepping further back from us and I don't want to love you less. If we never end up together and we both go our separate ways in this world I want to remember you just like this. I want to be able to capture the exact moment that I realized I love you in ways I have never loved another human being on this earth, and I want to paint that moment into a still life portrait, and once that moment is painted I will spend my days staring at it and remembering the beauty of that moment and how it completed my life. Because that was all I had ever lived for. I want to always remember you being as beautiful as you are now and if in order for that to happen I need to step back and just learn to love you from a far.

That is what I shall do.

Happy Birthday Daddy

Like superheroes of saturday morning cartoons, he seemed indestructible
And although I knew he couldn't lift a car with one hand nor fly, it didn't matter
He was my hero

He ruled with an iron fist but iron has never felt as soft as cotton
Because he knew how to rule without dictating
He could yell without lifting his voice
Because he struck fear with his mere presence

See we weren't scared of what he was capable of
But more scared of disappointing him
Because we looked up to him

I remember one day I asked him what his favorite color was
And he responded "I do not have one"
And instead of being confused I was fascinated because to me he was so suave that colors didn't phase him
He looked good in whatever the fuck he wore

See my father could command a rooms attention with a mere throat clear
And no he wasn't extraordinarily tall nor big, he was simply what I'd like to call "the man".

And although he'd left his prideland
He was prideful
And Although he always had his hands full
He handled
every aspect of home life
And to them he was the man in the suit who ran shit
But to us he was just daddy

Memories of nigerian dreams traveled to a country in hopes of a better life
Deep rooted accent in every word he spoke

And as I grew up friends told stories of fathers strayed with no regards for family
Or divorces resulted in love lost
But these stories were incomprhensible to me
You see my family was perfect

And at age 16 that picture perfect photo shattered

And there was no longer a glue to this family
And there was no longer a glue to this family
And there was no longer a glue to this family
Shit started to fall apart

My mother shed tears into wells of wishes
as if each one dropped could resurrect him
And they say time heals all, but death is irreversible
So collecting all the seconds in the world cannot resurrect him.

And we began to hate clocks in our house because they simply reminded us of how much time had past since he'd died

And the sunsets my mother once considered to be daily portraits of God merely served as reminders of the lonely nights which were ahead

Ans I remember promising myself if I ever got the chance, I would go toe to toe, face to face, eye to eye with God
To simply ask him
Why?

Because they say everything happens for a reason but fuck that shit, fuck your reason, I fucking want my father back!!!!

And right when I was on the precipice of becoming a young lady I lost the man of my life
and my brother grew up too quickly attempting to become the man of the house
and see my mother cried her days away missing the original man of the house

See at age 16 my mother met my father
and at age 16 I lost him
At age 20 my mother gave birth to my brother
And at age 20 my brother lost the man who'd produced him

and 6 years later these scars have not healed because contrarily to popular belief there are circumstances where pain is incurable
And 6 years later I have discovered there is no remedy
But please don't give me your sympathy
I do not need it, because you see I was lucky

I was lucky enough to wear the title of his daughter for 16 years
Because you see, as I have already explained, my father was "the man"