Thriving While Waiting

  “If you're still searching for love, stop and do this right away!”  I raised my head to see who had spoken. I wanted to see what he had said we should do but perhaps I hadn't raised my head fast enough. The speaker was a tall, dark-skinned guy. And maybe like the kind of guys Temi described as handsome with a chagrin. Once, I had turned down a relationship offer from a guy in our church and Temi held my face in her hands when I told her, and rubbed my eyes. She didn't  understand why I didn't even want to know the guy. These your eyes don't see clearly, she said. I bursted into laughter but she didn't laugh.  You said no to that guy blatantly, she still told me over dinner two hours later that day, her eyes far away, her mouth munching a spoonful of bland rice I had cooked that evening.  I wanted to  change the topic and tell her sorry that the rice didn't taste as sweet as the smoky jollof I had cooked the day before but the words got stuck in my throat....

  Three months after Temi asked me every day, “Have you considered coming with me to our monthly hangouts?”I conceded to her idea one Sunday evening over dinner.  The kitchen steamed in hot air from a boiling pot of chicken I got from Pa Chizo's Cold room along with Jani. Temi sat at the dining table reading from her tab. Whenever one of us cooked, the other sat nearby to show support.  “I'll go with you for this month's hangout, Yemi” She sat up, wide-eyed, a smirk on her face. I smiled. A wry smile and then turned to watch the boiling of the chicken lumps on the gas cooker for stew. The usual stew that makes Temi happy every week because she could easily boil white rice or tubers for work with the hope of stew in the freezer. The monthly hangout is held on a Saturday. The venue was at Soteria Gardens in Marina on Lagos Island, South West Nigeria.  Our house was a two-bedroom flat that sat on the hillside of Magodo on the Mainland and I suddenly had cold feet about ...

  The sound of a blaring horn in the front yard woke me up. It was 7:45 am, and I still lay cuddled up in my purple blanket; I slept for longer hours on days I wrapped myself in it so I always used it on Friday nights. I didn't work on Saturdays to cover up for the sleep I missed on workdays. I wondered whose horn was blaring that loud.   Funmi was already cleaning the house. She wore her beige baggy shorts and a loose grey polo shirt, her black air pod in her left ear. She danced to the song she was listening to as she cleaned. On days like this, it felt therapeutic just watching her; she had this firm strength that was so easy to see. I smiled lazily. Funmi was such a special gift of God to me.   I just lay there beaming in smiles until she went outside our apartment and shouted Jide. I jolted out of my thoughts, Jidenna was here as he told me yesterday. I had totally forgotten. It wasn't even 8 am yet and I wondered why he didn't wait till midday. I would hav...

Doctor George sat across the room on the foam-padded wooden chair in his office.  Two art murals hung diagonally beside each other on the wall above his head. Three textbooks sat on his table but my eyes caught a massive blue book themed The Physician.  Jidenna had booked me for an appointment yesterday. I sat deafened by the thick silence, waiting for Doctor George to speak but he sat bent over this desk scribbling notes in a purple journal. When he spoke, he looked me in the eye, his eyes held nothing. No promise, no assurance. “Following your family history closely, I have seen no trace of Vitiligo at all which is not abstract though.” He said Abstract. I didn't remember the meaning of the word but I nodded.  When I left his office, I memorised that he'd put me on phototherapy and had given me corticosteroids to even out my skin and stop the progression of Vitiligo on my skin.  I didn't flag down a bus outside the premises. I stood by the roadside even though Mam...