SIMPLE (MANGO)

In Lagos I felt this world for the very first time

Under a wide-eyed Ikoyi sun, my heart, mind and soul came to life

The mangoes were always in season

I was a boy, and nothing more. 

My mind was open… 

The gate was never locked

So my dreams wandered free

Some days, they walked with me

On others, they dashed off in every direction, hoping to tempt me into new games of discovery 

Nothing was real

Yet it all was

I wasn’t yet good at pretending to be myself

I was a boy; nothing more.

I drifted through life as would a paintbrush

Aimless, simple.

On the days the rains fell,

The drops crash-landing like millions of miniscule musical meteorites

I picked them up, held them in my bristles

And carried them with me

Even now, they color the movements I make

Blooms of hibiscus shone around our home

Like little red stars that had lost their way and settled amongst the greenery

My house, in those days, was a city

The walls hummed with energy

It was my palace

I ruled it with a playful hand

My fingers spoke a language they never had to learn

The surfaces of this city of mine lived to make conversation with them

They had a heavy vibration

Curiosity oozed from my very pores 

This world needed explaining and mine was the intrepid mind to do this

When I explored my city, lizards hurdled gravel like mountains

Scaled walls

Watched my antics

Told stories of them

Wanted to join in the fun.

All of this happened. 

I lived it in my very bones.

I was a boy, and nothing more.

Ignorant of my own smallness, I knew things then that I would never know again

Like how to travel to other worlds, borne by the songs of my grandmother

And how to live life to the beat of the simple things within it

These hands and feet of mine were still learning to fly

The day would come when they would be taught to do so

Until that time, they were content to look to the sky

There was poetry in every motion and joint of my body

I was a boy and nothing more

Dobra was the first girl I ever tried to impress

Her thick, inky plaits resembled shiny rope

They glistened.

We were the same size.

She had a certain bigness about her.

I didn’t yet know of the thing called art.

It fueled me all the same.

It flowed through me like a breeze through leaves.

Like a breeze through hair.

A breath of energy reminding me to move, to breathe.

It was my air.

It is my air.

My muscles didn’t mind

The mango tree in front of our house was magic

I was never to climb it

The jewels it dropped tasted of laughter

When I drank up their juice, the sunlight sang through my bones

This too happened.

More times than I could ever count.

But fewer times than I’d like to think.

My dad was the biggest man I ever knew

I could never scare him

Alexis lived outside. 

She and I, we liked the same food.

Hers was the first friendship I ever knew

Her scent was that of unclaimed mornings

Even now it still clings to me

My city is an enormous vessel

A great pyramid that is the home of my childhood

Memories were laid to rest in that tomb

They took with them things from these plains, reminders of what was.

Ties to what they had left behind

Alexis also.

Memories.

So hard, yet with soft edges.

A full moon, on a cloudy night.

Simple.

© Axel Cooper, 2017

Mango
Photo by Asit K. Ghosh
from Wikimedia Commons