A Girl’s Guide To Immortality

Kelechi sat with his head bent. The only evidence of consciousness was the occasional nod of his head as if he was agreeing to something and the constant movement of his hand. My poet was writing.

When I had arrived the night before, he looked like he was about to cry. Sitting down to overcooked jollof rice held up by the suya I had stopped to buy on my way, he told me he hadn’t been inspired for days. There was nothing he wanted to write about.

He appears to have found it. In between kissing me senseless and laughing in his bed, Kelechi found inspiration. His eyes darkened, the laughing wrinkles that lit them up vanished, he wore a grim face and skilled fingers left my breasts for the familiarity of a computer keyboard.

I once told him that he had the same face when he wrote as he did when he was inside me. “I take my art very seriously”, he had whispered back to me.

The first time he touched me, really touched me, I felt like a bare page. Fingers taking their time to draw out lexicons. He wrote in me every word he wanted to say and I recited them back to him like a child learning a rhyme.

I hear the almost entrancing sound of keys clicking and answering to my lover’s touch. I can understand their obedience, their willingness to do what he asks and the need to be touched by him again.

The first time I met Kelechi, I was too deep in the bottle to notice him. We sat in Bayo’s living room, blurting out random guesses to his poor description of a book. ‘’Catcher in the rye”, Kelechi said firmly. I snorted in mockery of what I knew was the wrong answer, but he had been right. After his very correct guess, he looked where I was sitting and smiled. I wanted him to do it again.

When he asked me on a date, he showed up at my office. Showed up. No texts, no calls, just an appearing act.

“Come eat with me.”

I wanted to stare him down and tell him off for just showing up. So, I went to get my purse, walked by him to his car and got in when he opened the door.

I really showed him.

The jealousy that used to wash over me is now replaced by pride. I no longer wondered if I was second to his art. I know why he got up; I know where the inspiration had come from. Kelechi, in my hands, had seen a revelation and had hurried to put it into words.

“I love you,” I said in a whisper.

He turned to face me and broke into the sweetest of smiles.

“Show me,” Kelechi answered as he walked back to bed. “Show me how you love me.”

This is how you live forever; By holding a writer’s heart and touching the poet in ways his hands force him to describe.