December 2022. 

Time unfurls too quickly.

I sprawl my hands with wistful longing, hoping to grasp those memories. To slow them down. But I fail. Time wobbles without understanding. The days and nights are laden with a vicious harmattan. My bones are weak, my head thrumming hard, my nostrils clogged with mucus, my throat sore, swallowing unbearable. My lips are coated with crimson blisters; malaise shrouding me so tightly. 

I do not want to feel the vivacity of Christmas. Unlike the Christmases before, the smoky aroma of jollof rice and grilled chicken wafting from the kitchen sickens me now. The faint melody of the St. Vincent choir carols on the streets ignites my fury.

I’m scattering. He’s leaving you keeps ringing in my head. I do not check for his messages. I ignore text and emails, including the ostensibly imperative ones from friends (C is asking if I enjoyed reading A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara; N wants to know if I’ll be available next week; F wants me to send him my Spotify Igbo music playlist). On my bed, I roll from side to side, scrolling through my gallery for pictures and videos of us, trying to relive those shared moments. 

The first video I tap on is the one from our second date: I am holding my phone to the mirror of a  restroom, he is beside me, grinning as I say something to him. We seem so excited about something, though I cannot remember why. I want to cry, but the tears do not come.

My mother walks in, her eyes searching my face as if for her missing jewelry. Her loose peach gown is smeared with oil and smells of thyme and nutmeg. She asks what is wrong; I say nothing. She gives me a more cynical look, snorts, and says, “You’ve not had your bath for three days! Three days! What kind of rubbish is this?” 

Politely, I tell her to leave me alone. She does not hesitate to walk out, muttering. From the restroom near my room, she shouts, “Food will soon be ready, oh. If you like, starve.”

My stomach churns, but I am too lazy to go to the kitchen, too exhausted to get out of bed. The worms in my abdomen must be eating from my intestine, but I pay them no mind. 

A WhatsApp notification arrives. From him. He says his bags are packed and he will leave tomorrow. Again, he says he’ll miss me severely and wishes we could see one last time. 

I do not know when the words, “So this nigga is fucking leaving me?” fall out of my tongue.

***

It was the first time I texted a man on Twitter. Because I mull over things a lot, I do not text men who I find attractive rather. My brain tells me that, somehow, things would go wrong, so I fold my desires inside me until they wither, or hope, magically, they text me first. But something was charming about this man. 

It was his birthday, I remember. A good friend of mine retweeted his picture with the caption, Happy Birthday. The image pulled me: his face close to the camera, with carefully etched eyebrows and a mustache accentuated beautifully. I wanted to know this man. I searched his tweets to ensure that he was pretty moderate in dispersing his opinions, and this mattered because if he sat on a stool of bigotry, I wouldn’t bother texting him. I thought his tweets were reasonable, and I learned that he loved music, too. 

I texted him, unsurprisingly, with no tumult in my stomach. He replied immediately. I told him he was a beautiful man, and he said I was no different. It did not seem like an obligatory retort to what I had said; he meant it—I could tell because he liked a couple of pictures in my media. 

We started talking; our conversations sailed so easily. We exchanged phone numbers and had a couple of phone calls in the following days. At some point, I was terrified: why was everything going so smoothly? Why was he just as interested in this friendship? 

He would call, mainly in the evenings, to ask how I was doing, what I was doing, what I was writing. When my essay about my literature teacher got published, he read it and shared it everywhere. One evening, during our daily calls, he said he loved me, and the butterflies in my stomach grew fat, fluttering and tickling. He lingered in my mind. I was scared to admit it at first, but I felt the same way towards him. I sincerely adored this man who was three years older than me. I didn’t know how to navigate this love. The last time I fell so deeply in love with someone (which was also the first time), not fleeting crushes, was in 2020, immediately after I affirmed my queerness: we loved each other, but I still carried the  tinges of religious guilt, so I ghosted him. 

But this time, though not from a place of religiosity, something still terrified me about love. 

The first time we were supposed to go on a date, I turned down his offer; I lied that I had issues at home, but, truth to tell, I was insecure. I felt I was undeserving of him, of this new love. Soon, I started combating the lies my brain fed me.

We finally met at a quaint restaurant squashed inside the bustling streets of Lagos mainland. When we saw each other, we hugged in that mild, brief, and prosaic way that two straight men would, and chose a sheltered corner where we could talk without excessively constraining our conversations.  

The large lamp above splashed a pallid yellow on our faces, but it made him look even more ravishing. While he spoke, I kept staring at him in wonder. As he nibbled on his pizza, even when he spoke kindly to the waiter, I loved him more. Our conversations stretched across many things, some of them redundant chunks of what we had said on the phone. At one juncture, he paused and said, “I’m so impressed. You are so beautiful.” Warmth gurgled inside me.  

When evening came, as he walked me to the bus stop, he slipped my hands into his, mine graceful and long, his more oversized, soft. I did not mind that many eyes must have noticed us, two men holding hands; what mattered was the safety I felt with him. 

That night, he sent a text saying he loved me and wanted to do this over again, and I slept with glee in my soul. 

As weeks passed, a delicate conversation we’d had before returned: what the future held for us. 

He schooled at a University in the North, nearly nine hundred kilometers from me. Still, he was home in Lagos because of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) strike that began four months ago. He seldom visited home during holidays because he stayed with his elder brother, who also lived in the North. He came to Lagos before the strike started, planning to stay for a month. But ASUU happened. A month was morphing into months. 

There was news that ASUU would soon call off the strike. This news should make me happy as I’d had a delayed session in school, but it shattered me. That evening, I was reading Vagabonds! by Eloghosa Osunde and partly paying attention to the grumpy voice from the radio, when I heard the news. The leaders were ready to meet the federal government officials. Hotness surged up my chest. I felt my heart scorch. I said, “No? What does this even mean?”

It meant this new love would glide away from me—this brittle love.

We spoke that evening, reassuring each other that no matter what happened, we’d keep in touch. Despair sat in the air, strong and stinging. The silence bloating between us spoke words. The plan was to see each other often in the coming months, to enjoy the present, even if the future held nothing. And if the future did hold something, then we would make it official. 

I never fancied a fleeting love, but I wanted to relish whatever this was. 

The strike ended. My school, the University of Lagos, resumed in October. His school, Ahmadu Bello University, would follow in January. He stayed back in Lagos. 

Because his home was near my school, we would go out on weekends, spending time with each other. My roommates at the university noticed the glimmer on my face when I spoke to him on the phone, but they didn’t know who it was, and I was scared to tell them about him. On one of those weekends we spent together, he brushed his lips against mine in the restaurant restroom. It was brief. I wanted him to dwell more on my lips, but he could not. We could not do this for long. Someone might see us. 

We talked about sex, which made me super anxious because I had been so used to self-pleasuring that the thought of having someone give me sexual pleasures made me uncomfortable. I was scared he would stop talking to me like the other men when I told them I was not ready for sex, especially penetrative sex. I remember he told me, sex or not, that he still loved me deeply; it made no difference, anyway. 

I wanted this love to last. I want to hold this love so tightly.

***

I reach for the Vicks inhaler on my bed and stick it into my left nostril, inhaling the strong menthol. I do it repeatedly, interchanging between both nostrils, until I can breathe moderately. I make sure the thick grey blanket covers every part of my body. I go through my phone again, hiding pictures and videos of us—I don’t want to lose them, and I don’t want to see them either. 

On YouTube, I search for videos about getting over a love interest, and I pay attention to all of them. I do this, patient enough to comprehend the points made. I fling my phone on the bed after long minutes of watching these videos. They are wrong, clichéd, packed with delirious nonsense, all of them. 

I pick up my laptop, and in one sitting, I type:

i.
love is slithering out of your palms 
like eels on a sloppy boulder

your mother rasps out the instruction 
of keeping your marbles sane when
your lover thinning into the air 
becomes a mania in your memory

you will try to sluice him off your mental archives
with the Lux shampoo
for your hair
but in the floral whiff 
the darkened-orange suds avalanching down your skin
you will find fragments of him

ii.
his absence was a black fleck 
now, a velvet blanket sheathing
your skull. 

iii.
under the sheets crisped from harmattan
you are gnarled into a ball
crying
and crying
and crying.

I send it to my phone and upload it on my WhatsApp status, my Instagram story, and, unlike me, I don’t give a fuck whether it makes sense or not.

From my room, I can see fireworks, a shimmering kaleidoscope of colors. 

There is a knock on my door: a soft knock. I know it is my mother; I recognize this knock from moments when she would try to apologize for yelling at me. I tell her to come in, and as she does, smoky jollof rice fills my room. She drops the plate on my study desk. 

“What is happening, Nonso? Talk to me. Why are you like this? Did you not write your exams well?” 

I brace myself as she says this. She moves closer and sits on my bed, and looks at me with deep worry. I can see the slight wrinkles on her face, and can hear the weary tone in her voice. 

“Nothing, Mom. Nothing,” I say, even though I wish I could say everything. 

She changes the topic. “Those neighbors in that opposite house killed cow o. A big one.” 

“Oh,” I say. 

“Let me go and check the food on the gas. If this food is not enough,” she points at the jollof rice, “go and take o. I know you don’t eat well in that school. You better eat well before you go back.” 

“Okay.”

She stands up and leaves. 

As I try to eat,  my father comes in, his gait slower, more calculating. I am sure my mother told him to check up on me. 

“Nri a na-atọ ụtọ? Is the food sweet? Why are you not eating much?” 

“I am eating. See,” I say, forcing spoons of rice into my mouth. 

He says nothing, and we are both quiet. He looks around my room as though searching for a clue. 

“Your mother said you have not been active in the house. That you have not even poured water on your body, why?” 

I say nothing. 

He continues, “But you have everything: food, clothes, data, pocket money, your phone. We pay your school fees. What is now making you like this?”

“Daddy, how am I? I’m not sad!” 

“Don’t hurt yourself. I will give you money this evening.” 

He walks out.

I burst out in tears, wishing I could tell my parents, hoping they would understand. I never miss out on telling them about my joys and worries, but this one, I cannot, and it hurts to hide this vital thing from them. 

How do I tell them that I’m in love with a man, and this man is already leaving me? 

***

I think of my older siblings and envy them. They always shared their love stories with my parents, even when they were young adults. I remember my parents had a name for my brother—Casanova—because he dated and broke up with so many girls during his secondary school days. I remember my sisters having boyfriends and my parents telling them to carry on but be safe. I remember those conversations my parents had with them about safe sex, celibacy, love, and marriage. 

A blurry memory from my sister’s eighteen birthday:

In the sitting room adorned with balloons, boys and girls my sister’s age perched on the settees, my father called my sister into his room. I was there and can’t remember what I was doing. He asked, “Which one of those boys is your friend?”

My sister laughed and said, “The one with the full hair, always smiling.”

At twenty years, I have never told my parents about love, never spoken with them about dating. I shield this reality from them. 

When I first fell in love with him, I was too excited that the words could slip out of my tongue, but I knew well enough not to say them. My parents noticed and asked what was happening, but I told them it was nothing. I know my parents too well; I was too scared to break their heart. Many times in my early teens, my mother had shunned me, in fear rather than anger, for “behaving like a homosexual.” Whenever stories of a person rumored to be homosexual got to her ears, she would say, “God forbid!” hoping none of her children “goes into that act.” 

While my father might be mostly nonchalant about this issue, once, I heard him call two men in love disgraceful, seething, and I asked him, “Why do you hate these people so much?”

My father replied, “Because society says it is wrong.” 

***

His message comes in:

—Don’t you think we should see tomorrow morning before I leave? And we should have a call.

Rage fills me. I want to type, “Why are you fucking doing this to me? Do you want to scar me more?” but I reply, “No. We’ll be fine.” 

He sends a heart emoji. I do not reply. 

***

My friend, Bolu, is candid. Like his hair, a glowing black halo, his honesty shimmers. He listens to a sober me bemoaning how bleak I have become because of this love. He tells me how inexorable love can be. He says he knew how happy I was when I was in love, and tells me to brace up. He cracks jokes at intervals, and says, “Hope your eyes are not red because of man?” 

He then talks about self-love and asks about the book I’m currently reading. He urges me to read if I’m not reading at the moment. We dive into another conversation, and I notice his careful deliberateness in switching topics so as not to harm me. He says he loves me and urges me to reach out if I need something. Before he ends the call, he makes another joke; I laugh. 

Soon after, I drag myself to the bathroom.

***

I am staring at the bleak white bulb on the white ceiling in my room. The harmattan winds are more ferocious now; so are my hormones. I reach for my penis; thoughts fill my head. Slowly, with my left hand, I touch myself, scouring memories for erotic images, until pleasure ripples through me and I erupt on my lap, staining the blanket. 

I sleep afterward.

***

I spend the next day immersing myself in Adele’s 30. I try to respond to the emails and WhatsApp messages. Clean my room and arrange the books on my shelf. But despair is a respecter of none—it clouds, it arrests. 

The weight of this sadness pulls me, weakening my immune system. Suddenly, I feel a more intense cold. My vision becomes a blur. Each time I sneeze, blood taints the mucus. My head feels like a parade ground with soldiers stomping hard. Sick of my room, I go into the sitting room and lay on the raven three-seater settee.

Evening already, I wake up to my phone ringing twice, but I do not pick up. I receive his WhatsApp message that says he’s already returning to school, and I am too numb to feel anything else. 

I reply, Okay, safe journey! 

He replies I love you very much, Nonso. 

I read the message and unpin his chat. I go back to sleep.

***

I do not remember the dream, but I’m sure it was a nightmare. I wake up panting, sweating. I’m not in the sitting room, not in my room, but in my parents’ room, in between my parents. 

“You have woken up,” my father says, his voice sleepy. He is on the right, my mother on the left. 

I squint at the dimly-lit room, I feel queasy. I trace the clock; it is past two at midnight. 

“Your body was like boiling water. You were running serious temperature,” my mother says, her tone no different from my father’s. She continues, “That’s why your daddy carried you inside our room. You were even talking to yourself. We want to watch you.”

“I don’t think you’ve treated Malaria since September, abi? We’ll call the doctor today. Your body has been very hot,” my father runs his hands over my chest and continues, “Sorry, nna.”

“Oh,” I say. 

And now, this is all I want to do: stay in their warmth and hold onto this moment.

About the Author:

Chinonso Nzeh writes from Lagos, Nigeria. He thinks of himself first as Igbo and then as a storyteller. His works have appeared in Evergreen Review, Isele Magazine, Agbowó, The ShallowTales, Ibadan Arts, and elsewhere. He’s a prose reader at Beaver Magazine and an editorial assistant at Black Boy Review. His essay, The Slipping Away, won the 2023 Isele Prize for Nonfiction. 

*Featured image by Pexels from Pixabay