nixon0

[nixon0]

I'm yours and I'm not yours. Those were your desolate, heartwarming words you had left me with as you kissed my calloused lips before telling me about moving to Lagos for college; even though we had both sworn to each other to go East - Nsukka, perhaps. You promised me we were going to be together till we were dust. You said your love was untethered by time or space; yet you forget me so easily - or maybe you didn't. Maybe I wanted more than you were willing to give; maybe we were too young to make such promises. Oh, how I miss your touch, the feel of your velvet skin against mine when I "spooned" you at the back of our high school yard - do you remember? I know you do; you always said you love my eyes. Do you also tell him that too?

You were my first love, my only love, and in some ways, I had hoped it would be for eternity. But of course, too much pleasure is pain. Did you enjoy all our moments together? Because I did, and I would stretch every moment until it becomes unmalleable. Sometimes I fear I might lose the image of your face when we were together. I would strain and dig through all the folds and creases of my brain until I can extract it, but then I would lose it. I don't know how to say goodbye to you; maybe I don't want to say goodbye. I can't imagine you've left me. How can love be so sweet and painful? What kind of psychological torture is this; such pleasurable pain?

My heart is sour and heavy. I know we were not perfect, but we always had an understanding. You were the only glove I could fit in. All the memories we shared bring both pain and joy; all of the moments we could have had now. But then you left. You bagged my heart and soul and ran off without looking back; you left with a piece of me - you left with you. How it feels to be incomplete again. All those years of basking in the sun in your father's garden. And yes, do you remember, under the moonlight when it all started: When you held my hand and shyly pecked my cheek and confessed you liked me - no, loved me - and I took your inflamed eyes in and tasted the sweet off your lips. Did you ever imagine us as a couple? I always did: me, you, and two girls on a beach in Siena, Italy. Even though you left, I'm grateful for the time I had with you, when you took my arm and we started this journey till you left it and walked away into the night - out of my life. And I am pleased to know that you will always be a part of me as I'm a part of you too. Maybe you're right; you're mine and not mine, and even though you somewhere out there under this stars with someone else, I'm sending you love more than the stars in the sky . You will always and forever be my girl.

[nixon0]

ALL OF US

My mind is to me the most ambivalent and uncertain of my parts; always throbbing, rumbling, and jarring. What's all this noise for ? It's emotion so ethereal. It's desire growing ever Intricate.

My consciousness fading against each passing day; from sunset to sunset still the same rambling. I feel so disjointed from this world, as if cast off from it's presence , my mind build my new reality, it's voice echoes incessantly all through the day.

Everyday wakes up a new me , every hour a new excitement. My thoughts like water wave; furling and unfurling, undulated like creasing cloth; shifting back and forth; racing against each other. I feel me ; I feel us. It's like I'm slipping into different shoes upon each day's break of light, yet still maintaining the consciousness of my originality (core). I'm here, but not; I can hear, but I don't hear; I can look, but I don't see.

I feel all of them, but they don't feel like me. What's all this passion for? Why this unsettling conflict between happiness and sadness? When those my peace really comes?

I sit patiently watching as life moves like a moving picture. My emotions led by it's own mind. Melancholy and excitement are my constant apparels. My character and ambition a mask of my different me (them; us) . Where those all this stem from? My head is heavy and laden , who shall I pour it's contents too? Friends are like flies, pestering when there is something, and absent when needed. Family barely understand; everyone bars his own weight.

This is mine and I only will bare it. This emotions, passion, the clothes, my mind they are me ; and I'm them. We can only go so far in life, as much as our loads would permit.

[nixon0]

Me thinking of a hot afternoon on a beach

I could almost taste the sun burst that afternoon. A yellow, blazing juicy ball as always. Watching as the gulls and the ocean made music to me . My feet buried in the red hot sand and my skin pouring out it's tears. I watched it all ,I lived.

The ocean was like a creasing cloth; undulating, wavy but flowed with so much momentum. I felt different. The world around me felt different. But most of all a new excitement was borne within me : a feeling of an infinity. As I drew each breathe my lungs came alive, suddenly I felt as if the air wasn't enough to satisfy my lungs , longings.

I know this was intended to be a bit poetic and a description if a bright place. But , of all the beauties I have seen , I would call my eyes a liar to call this place beautiful. It was beyond that, it transcend the non living nature and breathe life into its visitor. One's skin against it part grows a sensation. This is no wonder, this a living habitant. This is my Place

[nixon0]

The Rye of Liege - continuation

" I was only tellin' him a story ma'am, " Tom said as the woman dragged her son. "Shot your wee mouth there. Whatcha telling him eh? , won't let you put your madness in him. Lest I ever see your bastard feet near me boy, I swear by The Light, I will cut 'em," the woman responded in a strident tone. Hardfoots were very disapproving of bastards , and even more hostile to bastards that lived with Crazy-Finch. Tom had a lot of oddities: His skin were lighter than usual ,he had dark hair (while Hardfoots typically had blonde, auburn or silver hair) , his ear were more pointy than others , and most evidently of all his feet were shorter.

Hardfoots had their suspicion on him , they discussed his anomalies and how his mother got him , especially the Summer-Hardfoots, but never in front of old Finch, as didn't want his trouble.

The Summer-Hardfoots were hosting the night party, as it was tradition that each household host the other houses, to strengthen their unity.

Finch being the Elder of the Summer-Hardfoots, was his prerogative to head the priming for the party. But he was feeling rather under the weather that morning and had sent Tom to the apothecary, Mr Smig of the Rain-Hardfoots, to get Goat Milk. On Tom's way back , he saw some children gathered round an apple tree looking ravenously at the overripe apples. He helped them pluck it , and then he started telling them a story as the children helped themselves to the apples .

Their story was interrupted by Mrs Buckle Winter-Hardfoot , who came to take her son, Smugus. She rained insults on Tom, that he remembered Finch's message afterwards. He left disheartened though he had grown used to their belligerence towards him. But he had Old Finch and Joi , Mr Finwell's farm girl , for consolation.

[nixon0]

The Rye of Liege.

In accient times, Hardfoots were travellers. Prowling from settlement to settlement, looking for easy catch: arable low-lands , that were well preserved and abandoned. They are nimble and innocuous creatures; sturdy,short (about 4ft average),hairy, and had gigantic hard feet. They were a different people: they moved in collosal packs; had no king or queen, other than the elders of each household; they are obtrusive , as humans regarded them as cursed creature, so they lead a life of constant relocation.

They were grouped into four household names: Summer- Hardfoots, Winter-Hardfoots, Spring-Hardfoots, and Rain-Hardfoots. While bastards were referred to as Sand-Hardfoots(of the Summer-Hardfoots), Snow -Hardfoots(of the Winter-Hardfoots),Water-Hardfoots(of the Spring-Hardfoots), with the exception of the Rain-Hardfoots, as they treated bastards and legitimates sons alike .

Hardfoots were jovial folks; drank and partied at the slightest opportunity; tiled and cultivated their lands - wherever they settled -; they had no interest in complicated machinery or tools , other than their cutlass, fickle and adze; they were loquacious by nature; cladded themselves in potato sack and goat hides, and never wore shoes as their soles were as hard as a wood.

They were quick settlers and moved with everything they needed. They were known wanderers, until they stumbled on The Rye of Liege. The land was their Canaan; a land of milk and honey. It was a promontory; had large cultivable green lands , tenuous streams , and strong oak trees. The Hardfoots decided to make a settlement of it - a final settlement. They immediately erected structures, planted and inhabited the land. They finally had a home , after centuries of traveling afoot.

Their lifestyle pattern had been maintained for generations; it has become a sacred legacy to them. But one particular Hardfoot broke from it . He had a curious mind , a bahavior considered heretical by the Hardfoots.

"I tell you, keep out from that boy tommy. He's trouble and nothing good will come of him ," a woman said as she pulled her son by the ear and dragged him . Tomson Sand -Hardfoot , was a bastard of the Summer-Hardfoots. He was an orphan, his parents wandered far off their pack and never returned. So he resides in his granduncle's hovel, with his granduncle, Finch Summer-Hardfoot, as his guardian. Finch Summer-Hardfoot was considered unhinged, or as the Hardfoots called it , "lost in the head." He was all ankles and bones ; had a sinuous back, his skin were like that of lizard's; creased and dry; gray hair streamed from the back of his head. He adopted Tom as ward/ heir and son, as he had grown too frail to tend his lands or clean his house. He told stories to the younger folks, when he wasn't sleeping or under some hallucination, he told them tales of Dragons, Amazon female warriors, and mythical creatures of the Ends of The World. Because of his story and eccentricity, Hardfoots termed him Crazy-Finch. They say his madness was the reason for Tom's behavior.

Tom read books , crafted machines to minimize labour, went about spewing heretical ideas (Human ideologies and concepts) to his peers . His mother was pregnant with him before she married Sheg Summer-Hardfoot. Sheg out of love for Tomson's mother, Nora Rain-Hardfoot, took her to the alter regardless of his family opposition. Three years later, Sheg and Nora went in search for a mysterious land, and they never came back. And his biological father identity remained undisclosed.