Gypsies Of A Blue Earth

Mami

The deadliest things are always beautiful, like stars crashing on a meadow of poisonous wildflowers, or how the teeth of a dog looks like a chain of gleaming pearls right before it gnashes your little finger off from its stem; like Okechukwu as moonlight paints vanity on his terrazzo teeth. Beautiful. 

What manner of a man does a goddess fall for? One who is not a wilderness—who has learnt the art of giving from the spring—never too little, never too much.

Oya

What manner of a man does a goddess fall for? The deadliest—one who can make her human; isn’t that what we all lust for? To be loved like droplets—not like storms. To be held in the warmth of mortality, drugging tiny vessels with golden breath. Holding on to names, lovers, last words, tongue kisses on falling bridges and dying. Dying with a chest full of love, knowing that if you could live again, you would die in love. Isn’t this all we lust for? Mami will watch, we will watch, if beauty has ever been found in a few seconds to death (or rebirth) It’s in Okechukwu’s eyes. Mami will fold into his arms, we will watch. She deserves to be loved. We all do.

Oiza.

Mami’s heart has been found, did you see the son of man’s fingers playing on her skin gingerly as though she were a grand piano? We have been floods and bubbles of terror in Tsunamis, we have brought down ridges and drowned babies—freshly born, so their only memory of the earth was blue. We have been worshipped, but there is little love in worship. A child will fan the fire as long as it roasts his meat, he will fan still when the flames suck on his fingers; as soon as his meat rests in his belly, he drowns it.

What manner of a man will hum lullabies to a storm? One who knows how to love. We will watch. We will wait. Mami is a flower now.

Mama.

When your son comes in with a woman like a cloud, fastened onto his torso, you just know that a river would be drying up soon. This goddess has come with brutal thirst in her every pore. I fear for my Okechukwu— he has brought home a desert. A desert can only take and take and watch it dwindle beneath its gaze. She will never know what to do with love. There are things a goddess cannot learn.

Earth.

I am scared too. Like you. I am scared that the scarred do not remember the cause of their wounds, or they do not care. The time has come for history to repeat itself, a bonfire of thirst crackles in the belly of every sea, of every stream, of every goddess born of God’s tears—a thirst for love. You see when the seas begin to clamor for the softness of mortality, you should start fetching water, but my children do not know; it is my curse to sit and watch them revel when their skies are hardening. 

I remember their scorched eyes. I remember their drooping skin, lovers’ parched tongues exploring wastelands in despair. They do not know that they can die again, and more horridly. Or, they do not care.

Okechukwu.

I loved her—from the first time mama washed my naked buttocks with her skin. I loved her—when she fell onto my skin in a tatched roof bathroom infested with senile cockroaches—I was thirteen, and learning to be a man. She spoke to my every pore and calmed a scared child.

I have learnt everything from her: how to quench anger, to satiate a wanderer, to murder men and break their bones, how to give wholly and take wholly, to caress every inch of beauty in a being. To be.

Mami.

I have never had to look before I see. How do I know I would not drown the world with the wells of heaviness in this two eyeballs. 

Oya.

Come and have my heart too.

Oiza.

What use do I have of myself if I can only be feared? And taken from without drying up? Here I am, sweet man, kiss me until I am vulnerable enough to die.

Mama.

I fear for us. A drought is upon us and there are no rivers to appease with Cocks and goats. If only…

Earth.

I am scared too.

Okechukwu.

She talks in warped whispers, like she thinks a cruel wave is crouching in her throat, and when she kisses me, she trembles with fear of herself, so I kiss her instead. With my lips on her skin, I search in the places a soul might be hidden—on thighs, napes, plush nipples; there is none. 

She whispers into my chest:

‘Name me; own me.’

A goddess should not talk like a pet. This is what happens when you fit a storm into a cup, she will rip my bones apart with want, for she has nothing else to give.

Earth.

God, let me close my eyes a bit. I have seen too much destruction.

The strongest is the man who would not drink blood to quench his thirst. My rivers have wandered like gypsies off my palms into the palms of pale men. 

See them now, parched bags of blood and bone lying in the heat to die, kissing still; they do not know. Or, they do not care. The deadliest things are always beautiful—Love is.

 Bio

James-Ibe Chinaza is Nigerian and lives in a slum village with beautiful sunsets.

She has her work published in the Kalahari review and wishes for more publications.

She is an undergraduate of English and literary studies.