everywhere i go

23

The first mistake was putting a spirit creature into a human body. I find my human body so impossibly difficult that I've all but given up on it... it concerns me, being tasked with this body, like somebody left me a house as my inheritance. Every inch comes with some immense difficulty.

I feel it when my nails crack or when I bite my tongue, yanking out the knots in my hair, checking for lumps in my breasts. The acne on my back starts to bleed, sunken sores form on my wrists, my eyes burn. Nothing works correctly. It requires a kind of upkeep I was never properly briefed on. It realize I am the wrong one for this task when my lips bleed and when my shins swell purple and blue.

If I could hire a better custodian, I would, if I could liquidate this asset, I would. I recognize it as an asset, the way I can monetize the works of this body, but if I could trade it in for all that money now, I would, wouldn't I?

It feels like home, here, somewhere I always am, but what would it feel like to pack up my shit and go?

Anyway, for all the trouble it is, I am here and I will stay here. These days there's a cure for everything. When you children turn sickly and dizzy, you take them to get round red pills to correct their weakness.

So where does this demon soul go when that blood-weakened body survives? Where do I go to die again, how my soul was built to do, out of spite, out of weakness, out of hatred and fear? Well, here I am, abiku as I have always been. Somebody sent me here to watch me die.

Anyway, i think I worry too much about it. I just have to trust that I will die one day for good. Until then, i'l be the one who dies again and again, not like a phoenix, more like measles.... leg hair, I come back worse.

I spend my days dead and dying. I am the one who will be born and die to you until you let me lie, Abiku born to die. I know this about myself and I understand that I will die a thousand little deaths before the big death.

It's this in between thing that I am, the way I was born, this never-what-it-seems thing, that lets me die so often. When I was born, I was pale pink as a piglet, and I died to my father as I was not black. I grew older and darker and died to my mother as I was not white. As my tongue matured and spoke, I died to my grandmother when I did not form Urhobo words. I died to my parents again when I refused to speak the words in church and I'll die to them again when they find out I'm not who I say I am. I'll die again when they realize I've only ever been in love with one beautiful girl who loves the earth the way I always wanted to be loved, and I'm sure I'll die to her soon enough when she finds out I'm not who I said I was... When she looks at me and sees I am wholly a demon, abiku, born to die, out of spite, out of weakness.

i'll die to all of them someday, my bloodline, all the people who gave me my blood when I tell them that I am not a woman but Ogbanje, dragged out of the river by somebody's God.

And every friend I've ever had, I've died to all of them when they saw I truly was not the one I said I was, when they realized I was not white or that I was not black, when they found that my instincts were dark and ill defined as a demon's, grappling for whatever I might be able to have. I've died to each of them a hundred thousand times, and I came back each time out of spite and anger, but each time that heart in my body has started to work less well. When I die my final death, when each and every of my talismans has been dug up and destroyed, I will finally die to myself, once only. I'll die completely. When I get there, the place that comes after the final death, I will ask whoever's god is there whether he is still disappointed with me because I feel that I've done the best I could do with blood cells shaped like mine.