TEARS AND MISTS

Morsels race fast on tongue-track into throats, but not as Sam on the road that leads to the village’s amorous river, graced with the meandering twist of an elegant belle. He has the legs of antelopes that send him sprinting, catalysed by the determination to quench the frustrations burning his heart to ashes.

On the sedimentary, ebony, shoulders of the river, sits Sam. For a while, the sight of a quivering leaf, battling death in the river’s running hand, grips him. And the task of dumping his ordeals on the river’s breasts like the refuse Grandma had sent him to dump whenever it poured is put on a hold. Like Sam’s younger sis, Grandma knew he could not have stolen her jewellry, so they both placed a curse of failure and frustration on the suspected culprit, which is the tout opposite.

Since the witches that cast spell on him would be the eaters of the sacrifice he was asked to offer, he poisoned it, against the instructions of his dark, long-bearded and odorous native doctor.

Sam believes that, those loving bodies, moribund as this mourning morning, would not have cursed him. He notices that the river swallows falling mists, which he imagines to be tears of the sky, as she has done to that quivering leaf. So he imagines himself a body of tears.

Amazed, the river splashes on the face of the parrot that cinematographs the scene, as the body of tears drowns.

Sam returns home a body of mists and he cannot be hugged welcome.

OLADIMEJI DAMILOLA

 Mists and Tears