Author: J

I know pain!
The kind you feel
When someone you love
Breaks your heart
To the point that it shatters like never before;

I know pain!
The kind you feel
When you break
The heart of someone you love
Because you have to save yourself;

I know pain
The kind you feel
When someone you love
Gets over you
And moves on with someone else;
When you watch the person you love
In the hands of someone new
And you have to accept that they are no longer yours
To hold or to treasure;

I know pain!
The kind you feel
When someone you love
Looks at you
But you can’t look back
Because you can never love them back
With the same intensity that they deserve!

I know pain,
The kind you feel
When you watch your marriage,
Crumble;
And you sit silently
Because you are out of strength
Because you realize
That even love cannot save it!

I know pain!
The kind you feel
When you look into the eyes of someone you love
And all you see is pain so deep
That it pierces the soul
And you realize
That there is nothing you can do to save them from that pain;

I know pain!
The kind that dawns on you
When you see someone you love
Taken by another;
The kind of pain
That makes you realize
That you were late for love
And all you have to do
Is love them from a distance;

I know pain
The kind that can’t be put into words
Neither can it be described
The kind that makes you self-destruct
And sends you in a maze
Searching for a feeling you’ll never find;
The kind of pain that leaves you broken in your bed
At the depths of despair;
The kind of pain that will make you
Drown your sheets with tears of heartache;

I know pain
The kind you feel
When you get home
And silence is all that greets you
Making you realize
That you will have so many firsts
But you will experience them alone;

I know pain!
The kind that makes you cringe
When your favorite song plays on the radio
And it reminds you of someone
Who is now but a memory;
Or when you meet a stranger
With the scent of your favorite perfume
Which you stopped buying
Because it reminded you of someone you used to love;
Or when you order your favorite meal
In your favorite restaurant
And the banks of your thoughts
Burst painfully
Reminding you of the good old days
With someone you thought
You will have a forever with;

Trust me, I know pain!

J.Epereje©

How I wish you could take a step back
Look deep in my eyes
Identify my pain and emptiness
Try and relate to it
Dig deep into that pain
And realize how draining
Loving you has been;

I wish you could hold me close to your heart
So that I could listen to your heart beat
And see if it beats for me;
For my heart is lost
It doesn’t know if it can beat for you anymore

I wish you could go back to the drawing board
And identify the parts of you
That drew me closer,
That made me fall in love with you

How I wish you could recognize
The pieces of you
That make you a stranger to me;
My love is patient
But you have drained my feelings
You have taken so much from that cup
That it’s almost running empty
I don’t know how to fill it
All I can do
Is be a silent character in my love story
And watch you dominate
Parts of me
That I have struggled to build
And demolish the walls that barricaded my scars
Those scars of love!

But how can I expect you to give something
That you don’t even have!
Neither do you understand it
Love is a foreigner to you
All you do is take and take
In the pretense of love
You confuse love with selfishness

How can I even think that you will understand my pain
When pain is something you only imagine!
How I wish you would take a second and realize,
That to love is to be vulnerable
Maybe then, you would realize
That sometimes
The most important person in a relationship
Is the other person

J.Epereje©

In the silence of the night
I stayed awake
Tying to listen to love
But love was silent;
Dumb,
Or maybe tongue tied!

In the cold nights
I tried to reach out to the arms of love
To keep me warm
But it’s hands were numb;
When they enveloped my tiny body
They left me frozen!

In the lonely nights
I called on love
To come keep me company;
But love was deaf
It couldn’t hear me
Or maybe we were having a language barrier!

On those nights
When I was broken in pieces,
When despair engulfed me,
Leaving me lost in my bed
When darkness is all I was familiar with
When I was unable to love myself
When I couldn’t trust myself
And I needed love to bring me back to life
To breath the air of life into my lungs
To resuscitate me,
But love left the room
It took a trip to my dream town
And never came back for me

But I still hoped
I sat still
And healed myself
With the sweet memories of love
I kept the faith, in the strength of love

But when love finally showed up;
It had upgraded
It couldn’t recognize my sweetness
It couldn’t share the table with me
It showed me the gutters
Pushed me out
Evicted me from it’s paradise
Love did not need me to define it again!

I was devastated
Broken into a million pieces
Shattered!
Love pierced my very soul
Laughed maliciously as I tried to pick myself up
I met pain and brokenness
In tattered clothes
And they embraced me warmly
Barricaded my soul
Emptiness looked into my eyes
And I looked back
And I knew I was home
Damn! I was late for love!

J.Epereje©

When I left;
I was worn out
My heart was exhausted
My brain was tired
It had burn out
Loving you was too much of a task for me,
A tall order!

When I left;
The bare sight of me
Disgusted you
A simple look at me
Resurrected your demons

When I left;
I set you free
I let you go completely
But you claim
That I held you hostage
That your heart is lonely
That it’s longing for my love

When I left;
You started a nationwide search for me
Claiming that you needed your love doctor
That only my love could heal you
You alleged that your heart was in ICU
And you needed me to resuscitate it
That I am the secret antidote required for you to function again;

But you forgot that,
When I left
I went!
My heart took a walk
And it fell in love with freedom
It could finally breath!
And it fell so hard for the peace and tranquility that was lurking in my vicinity
I realized that I needed to save my heart first!

A few months ago, love died!
I reported the death to the nearest police station
So that they could come and take it to the morgue
I didn’t want to be a murder suspect
In the death of love!

Love died at exactly 2:00 a.m.
On a Tuesday morning.
It caught me by surprise
Love was not ailing
It did not show any signs
That it wanted to die

I suspected that love took its own life
But every evidence
At the scene of the crime
Pointed towards murder
Cold murder

The blood splattered was too much
For it to be a suicide
But there was no murder weapon
At the scene
I searched for it before calling the cops
In case it had my finger prints on it

Deceased at the wee hours of the morning
It made me question if I was the killer
I mean, it was dead silent
And I could not hear the intruder come in
Okay; wait; if there was an intruder at all:
How did he come in?
How did he leave the house?
All the doors were locked
Only him and I had the access to the key
In fact he kept them safely under his pillow when he slept

Wait, could it be him
Who woke up
Tip toed out of bed
Killed love mercilessly
Cleaned up
Then went back to slumber
As if nothing had happened
Then tried to frame me
For a crime I knew nothing about?

Could he be so conniving?
The audacity!
How could he?
But wait
What if it was me
Who sleep walked to the kitchen
Took the big blue knife
Came back into the room
Slaughtered love
In cold blood
Then went back to bed after cleaning up!?

No, no it couldn’t be me!
I’ve never sleep walked a day in my life
But why did I have the stains of blood
What exactly was going on here?
And where was the murder weapon exactly!?
Okay, maybe the CCTV footage could help me
Solve the mysterious killing of love

But no, turns out nothing was captured on the CCTV camera!
But how?
The cops would be here in a few
What exactly will I tell them happened?
Should I just plead the fifth?
Okay, maybe I should never have called the cops in the first place
But I needed them to help here
I needed the coroner
To rule it out as murder
Maybe conclude that it was suicide
Or maybe say that it was inconclusive

I wanted a death certificate
So that I could start mourning
Start going through the stages
Of grief and bereavement…….

J.Epereje©

To him;
I’m like a natural scenery,
The place where nature
Meets serenity.
I’m like a museum;
Historic,
Memorable!
He wants to look,
Not touch
To let the image of my body
Get imprinted
In his photographic memory.
He is fascinated
By how mysterious
I seem to be
He says;
I’m wanderlust,
An adventure
He wants to conquer!
He stares at me, like a puzzle
He is trying
To solve.
He says;
My body is a canvas
Depicting art
So intricate
Art so indelible
It will last a myriad of years

J.Epereje©