To the Girl In Me That Died.
to the girl that lived in Teenagehood's
closet...
When 12 was a number
to be young and happy
and the world outside was a Canvas
painted with the tiro of her dreams
When Puberty was the joy of standing in
Mama’s mirror
weighing the growing size of one left breast from the other
and not the insecurities that come now with
every lift of that same hand
that silently screams
"am I too fat?. Too thin?.
Is my face full of skin tags?"
When one thousand naira a day
made my belly full, made me feel okay
and kept absent from my brain the
grownup knowledge that
a thousand nairas would one day mean
next to nothing
unless I pushed and shoved
until the hustle paid
When my easier worries were what boys
to like or not to like,
which way to blink and wink
until he would agree
But funny how the Slum books
never really told me
to grab and live those childhood fantasies
because being single at 30
would bat eyelashes of pity,
shake heads filled with sympathy and
say with eyes that spoke volumes:
"Oh!. There must be something wrong with her. Oma ss o”
When my daily problems were
what lunches to eat,
what strokes of cane to avoid
what gossips and cliques to be a part of
And not the hidden truths
wrapped in the harsh realities of
Bleeding
Expectations
and Manifestations
To the 12 year old me that forgot those simpler dreams
of dreaming bigger
and instead forced them into
growing thinner until
they withered...
I would tell her she had been right all along.