Birdy, Fregene, Earth and Sniffing

Prompt:

Jan 18

Free Association

Write down the first words that come to mind when we say… home… soil… rain. Use those words in the title of your post.

 

Home… Birdy

 

The singer.

And Fregene.

 

Birdy’s music tries to do to me, what onions also try to do – make me cry

But I might have a medical condition, which restrains tears from falling from my eyes.

Her voice in my head reminds me of every sad time I never had

Every heartbreak I never experienced

Every loved one I never lost

Every time I have been misunderstood

Every time I have questioned what was wrong with the world

Every love that has been unrequited (and trust me, that’s a lot to think about)

Those moments I felt ashamed

And those ones I feel like reliving

 

Her songs make me feel foolish

For every time I have been aggressive with the world, people, situations and with myself.

Her songs give me the kind of calm that makes to say to Chamomile tea, ‘to hell with you!’

 

 

Fregene is my friend

I do not remember how I started calling him Birdy

But I like that I call him Birdy… because he hates the name.

Fregene reminds me also, of Chamomile tea

Because he once relayed to me an experience he had

With daylight bandits in Ikeja, Nigeria

His calm reaction to the situation still amazes

Fregene is my Chamomile tea friend.

 

 

Soil… Earth

 

Sandy, Humus, Loamy and Clay soil

I stabbed my class in primary school where they first introduced this concept of classifying soil into 4 texture

And so I never really understood it.

Alongside the class on Sin, Cos and Tan in secondary school.

And that on Estates and Settlements in the University.

So yes, I have a bunch of things I do not understand.

But here’s what I’ll tell you about the earth and its four different textures;

When your end is here, and your body is let down into the earth,

Loamy, Clay, Sandy and Humus would feast on it.

For when it comes to food, all differences are put aside…

 

Rain… The Scent Of…

 

My sister Bosayo, and I were the weird ones.

Whenever my father drove into the filling station,

We would, instead of switching off our phones and putting out our cigarettes,

Sniff sniff sniff the air

The scent of petrol intoxicated us

 

My sister Bosayo, and I were the weird ones

Whenever it threatened to rain,

We would, instead of running to the back of the house to pack the clothes,

Press our noses against the dusty net in our room

And just sniff sniff sniff.

The scent of the rain intoxicated us.

 

Now, I am the only weird one

I sniff sniff sniff weird things

Time has stretched us apart from each other

And I do not know whether Bosayo still sniffs around the world

But weird things still intoxicate me.