This is how it should have ended, with you listening to my squeaky nine year old voice asking you to stop. You unknowingly taught that young girl a trick she would find useful in her experimentative years, you know that age where anything and everything are up for trial? She never knew how useful orange peels were when you wanted to mask the presence of nicotine. Kinda like a wife who amuad and got laid in the washrooms in the club where she and her girls had decided to spend their girls’ night at. At 3 am as she stumbled into her house she went straight to shower because of course his cheap cologne had to be scrubbed off her skin coz duh boo imports his colognes. I’m rambling, sigh.
This is how it normally ends for me. I think of you and then my thoughts wander as far as the shepherd in The Alchemist. But this nicotine what did it do to you? Once, you chimneyed in the shadows because mum was a fire that you did not want to come close to, now you just don’t care. Your breath reeks of it, you cannot do without it heck man you’d rather puff some than eat. These days you have also decided that maini unatambua ni ya ng’ombe tu . Yours doesn’t count sindio? Have you seen yourself? You are a shadow of yourself, from a heavyweight to a featherweight.
It always ends with me wishing that I could go back. Way back to that day we both stood outside in the dark and I watched you squeeze that orange peel onto your hands. I should have told mum. I should have showed her where you hid your gaspers, it would have been hot but maybe we wouldn’t be where we are now. It ends with me listening to you cough when you think nobody’s listening and my already broken heart breaks some more. It ends with me standing at your puffing point standing up against the wall wondering how this habit manifested so fast. It sometimes ends with me having one in my mouth just to understand what it makes you feel….I never really let it go past my throat. It always ends with me wondering why I hide your habits when I notice them in their embryotic stage.
It now ends with me feeling angry every time I worry about you. Why? Simply because you do not worry about yourself; do you even care anymore? It ends with me asking myself constantly if we loved you a little bit more would it break your fall? It ends with me feeling angry with myself because I have done nothing to help you. It ends with me wondering how to help you out of that depression. You are spiraling, I’m angry, I love you….why can’t we talk about this? Why don’t we ever talk about anything?
Tonight, this is how it ends with me on my knees asking God to keep you safe and alive. It ends with me asking Him to help me keep the faith that you’ll be fine. Afterwards I’ll go to sleep and then when I wake up I’ll worry about you some more.
