when it hurts so bad

The cold clammy drops of yesterday’s heavy downpour fall in a slow rhythmic pattern on my bare arm
Drip
Drip
Drip
Its funny how annoying this usually can be
But today
Today is different.
Today my body burns hot, hot. A seering heat that blazes from my soul and envelopes me like the stinging pain from a freshly pinched throbbing ear.
The drops, cool, harsh, seem to seep into my soul fanning the burning heat within.
I sit there on the front porch of my house embracing both the inky night and its chilly breeze, allowing my soul to vent. My fingers trace their path through my tangled hair, jabbing gently with their tips to get to the roots and I am wondering when I will visit the salon.
Nothing does matter now,
Not now
Maybe tomorrow.
Today was not good.
Not good at all.
I found out Keriko was cheating on me.
Well, not technically.
It’s just that I am not over him even long after the break up and both our decisions that it was best for either of us.
He isn’t over me either and it’s been four months.
It’s just his technique of ‘moving on’ as fast as possible with whomever.
I wish I could be happy for him but it hurts and burns like a caterpillar rash
And all the scabs keeping in the healing wound can’t contain this blow. It’s opening afresh.
I can smell the coppery odor of blood as my soul’s scabs tear open.
It smarts!
It burns like pepper in my eyes.
I’m trying not to cry but I can’t help it. And it does not come easy either. My soul has no voice to express my tortured lament, so with every heave, my eyes brim over and fresh hot hot tears escape from the throbbing wound within
Soundlessly
Today was not a good day.
I brush my temples with the back of a heated hand and squeeze my eyes tight shut. The lids hurt with the fatigue of holding in so much. Laden with pent up grief and the scabs tear further releasing a fresh volt of pent up emotion that willfully roll down my face in clear salty tears.
The drops from the old pipe ceaselessly wet my arm, competing with each other drop after drop to maintain moisture on my heated arm.
Finally I inhale deeply, sucking the hot air in my soul. I am startled and shocked at the magnitude of heat pain produces as I let it out shakily.
I clasp my neck and test for what I am sure is already there,, the feverish sensation- the onset of something I dreaded.
The drops become chillingly cold- almost painful—I still welcome them. Maybe my body wont heed to this rudimentary torture, but my soul..oh my battered soul will surely scab again.

would you

would you mind if i told you
if i toldyou what am about to tell you
wouldyou mind?
would you mind if i told you what iam about to tell you
and tolds you what am about to tell you
would you mind? would you mind it would youmind that i told you what iam about to tell you would you mind?
would you let me tell you what i think you wouldmind me telling you?
would you mind?
maybe you would
maybe i shouldnt tell you

pieces of yesterday

I have been running so far. So fast and so hard from anything that reminded me of you, the friends we shared…I haven’t called them in months. Maybe they understand
Maybe not. I find myself past caring, Rex, your high school best friend texted me two days ago. He wanted to know how I was. I could not tell him I had taken leave onthe pretext of looking after my pregnant sister who is in Hawaii as I write but life seemed to have slipped from my fingers and left me cold and empty.
I could not tell our good friends that I have been lying on the soft brown leather couch that we used to huddle in and play scrabble for the past two weeks now; drinking milkshakes and gorging up obscene lumps of chocolate and now and again when my willpower is gone, tots of whiskey and wine….
After the mad binge is over, I stare blankly at the TV screen and almost spontaneously the tears start to flow. I don’t sniff or wipe them out. They seem to be excess pain that could not settle within the broken cracks of my festering heart. A clammy cold heart,,, and the feeling flows like goo down to my numb feet.

I lie down again, belch and feel sick of the mingled cocktail of alcohol, chocolate and milk rising up my tight throat.

I wish I could cry
Bawl out like a baby
But
My breast is heavy and sick; empty of anything real and beautiful.
I am terribly aware of how hopeless I feel. Alone and trapped within a shell called pain. It feels strange; why can’t I seem to break out of it?
I am afraid my pastor will start to call or text. I have not been to church in a long while. Not since it happened.
I could not forget it. That awful day
And I blame myself.
‘I should have seen it coming…’
‘I shouldn’t have trusted him to…’
‘how could I be so stupid to believe…
‘why is this happening to me….’
‘when will the hurting stop….’
My bible lies atop a box of chocolates.
I vaguely hear common sense warn me to watch my weight, believe God for the best, all things happen for a reason and I will get broke soon.
I wish I could care… but I don’t.
Out of force of habit, I pick up that old familiar bible and for the first time in weeks , a part of me suddeny lungs forward for a strange feeling of comfort that spreads widely within the hollow of the deep wound
My mind mauls through some of the scriptures I can remember through the vague distorted haze in my mind. I can barely understand it.
I badly want to sleep.
Sleep until all this is over so I can wake up free from the numbness but a tiny part of me relishes that elusive moment. My emotions travel through the pain, feeling its intensity so hard it shocks me.
The emptiness within me bars me from saying anything flowerier than the truth I feel now;
‘I need you to love me now. Don’t ask me to try coz I am so helpless. I can’t even pray. I just want to be honest. I want the pain to go away’ and in this truest moment with my maker, I realize I have never been as real or spoken so real a prayer as this.Suddenly the cold exterior of my broken heart seems to tear open and a pool of pain