maame blue

I come from a history of women who have run away from their children.

I come from somewhere else, with rats from the neighbours garden and cooking sessions with no explanation. 

I come from a history

Of women 

Who have run away

From their children.

I come from that dark place with a forehead dent and mistakes in the future

I come from silent attics and screaming as a prerequisite for violence

I come

From a history

Of women

Who

Have

Run

Away

From their children. 

I come from repression and the mismatched function of feeling out of place everywhere

I come from a place I've never really been to, never spiritually connected to, never been told about

I come from that first gen place, where expectation and disappointment meet to conversate and berate

I come and go on these things constantly

I come away from being

Another woman

Who runs away

I think my heart is breaking

A wrecking of all the things our friendship built.

I scream for it to stop but nothing comes of it

So I will myself to let you go.

Darkness shrouds the last of our days.

I should have known when I wrote our ending

When I pictured it through a freshly cleaned window

Things are over between us.

I can't muster care for you, only sadness.

This is it.

Wilting over poetry we read on the sofa

Eyes sharing glassy looks of old tears.

And that fire, sand laden and new

We didn't build it but we worshipped there

Gospel music and freshwater

We were so pure.

What do drums do to our hearts

That we might throw ourselves together in rhythmic freedom?

Bonding and breaking apart at the same time

The dance floor our church

No additives or preservatives

Just the mood and the vibe and the laughter.

How you can know a time is short

And still enjoy it as if it were years long

Sweet moments of food and hip hop

And tinder dates

So many tinder dates.

New ideas and new selves

Breaking old habits, picking up new ones

Better ones.

Leave the boys alone

Until they come begging

Then make a little time but not too much

Not too much

We didn't have too much time

When the fuck boys leave you alone

The streets are a quiet place.

You walk free, easy, doubtful

Your choices are a limit now

The walls no longer a suggestion

Can this be real?

You raised your standards and lowered your opportunities

They can smell it on you, sense it

So they stay away

You're not one to be had, manipulated, broken anymore

You cannot be dealt with

And so you walk free

Lovely peeps, I've started a @tinyletter called #AskMaame, giving out good(ish) advice with a slight therapeutic backing, on #mentalhealth or life in general. Email your questions for a tiny bit of help (or a chuckle). 👇🏾 [email protected]

Why you're a guest in the places you've been told to call home.

Why men make you laugh and break your heart with simple sentences that don't mean anything.

Why when your mother smiles at you you wonder what she's plotting.

Why trust is an imaginary friend that even you can't see.

Why family doesn't feel like family unless you've seen the beginning, middle and end of them.

Why your kindness fills you with a senseless dread, as you wait for some kind of violence to follow you.

Why no one should follow you.

Why spending time together feels like water torture.

Why you look in the mirror to forget who you are now.

Why being grateful feels like penance for a crime you had nothing to do with.

Why loving is hard.

Why being loved is harder.

Why believing in love is a fairy tale woven by liars.

The dust settled on my brow and I awoke to find the pilot wishing us good morning and welcome to the white cold of a spring London day

Like a stiff drink or gust of wind, reality hits me as I wait for hours, minutes, maybe only seconds before my mismatched bags arrive

Are you waiting for me? I pose serious questions with my eyes to strangers who look through me holding up blank cards

Blank to me without my name, before I am found, entrusting my luggage to the driver that only put my first name on the card. I hope there is not another me waiting a few minutes behind for a ride in the snow

The roads look the same. The fields look the same. The sky, the hills and the soundless car radio all resonate familiar with me.

I wonder about home and it not being my own home, never a place I lived before but a place my maternals have lived for years. It's supposed to be my home because it's theirs.

I am tired and weary and cold. Hugged heavy and tightly I enter the living room, familiar and odd. I ask about the snow, why it's here. No one knows.

Later my sister asks me if her skin is clearer than the last time I saw her. My mother wraps around me tightly and asks me not to leave. I just got here.

I have nowhere else to go and wonder about belonging to the place that stopped growing me years ago. If this is home then I am homeless. Lost in the blow up bed and jet lagged nights.

My return to London, to my divided UK, beckons like an oncoming train.

I'm not thinking the same way I was when I left, not feeling the same way, not even living the same way

But I still wonder the same, still muse over the need for external validation, recognised value as a writer, as a human, as a friend

I'm clearer in my fundamentals, but they still worry me. And when I return, will they bother me? Will I bother with them? Am I tethered to them?

London has questions and deep seated answers that the faint hearted cannot fathom

If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere, because elsewhere is not as hard, not as taxing, not as diverse and strong willed and unpredictable as a purple moon

I wonder if I will trip over all the unfathomable, or skip through all the fun and wretch and memories of the me I was and who I am to become

Because my fundamentals stay the same, but I am always becoming. Aren't we all becoming?

Did I forget that lonely was an old friend?

That by myself was

Made for

Here for

By

Myself?

The curious stroll through social media apps

The search for the Tinder app I deleted

The viewing of everyone's Instagram stories

As if I think I'll find life in those things

Sometimes I wake up and do it and think out loud

"What the hell are you looking for in there?

Nothing that you misplaced can be found in these pages of code and electricity and the world wide web of it all."

How could I forget that I created all the lonely I'm ever going to need

Ever going to want and desire and resent and despise.

Read more here - nylon: a collection of stories

ˈnʌɪlɒn/

noun

a tough, lightweight, elastic synthetic polymer with a protein-like chemical structure, able to be produced as filaments, sheets, or moulded objects.

Stories for the tough ones.

Image credits:

curly hair by Llisole from the Noun Project

Woman Wearing Glasses by Llisole from the Noun Project

short wavy hair by Llisole from the Noun Project

Hairstyles by Vladimir Belochkin from the Noun Project

We knelt by my grandmother's bed to say prayers at night.

I knelt in the corner of her bedroom, hands holding my ears, elbows out. This was a punishment.

I knelt on my covered floors, looking under the bed for a long lost book. Was all this mess mine or someone else's?

Were we so exhausted that all we could do was kneel?

I had a diary that I turned into a confidential government document, by whiting out the words. I don't remember doing it, but I did do it. I know why I would. Still though, what does a child know? Too much, maybe.

I knelt in the attic once, sorting through boxes in my twenty-first year, trying to find things that used to matter to me, but I couldn't. I could not find myself. And what is it to "matter"? I did not know.

The gaps in my memory were formed to protect me and now I hate them. I dislike that I do not know the whole of myself.

why were your fingers so?

your lips a sweet reprieve?

your accent, a london bass with a west african hum, melodious, seductive, perfectly manipulative. this is not how we met. but i remember the rivets of your chest, the black coils of hair that i kissed underneath your nipples, the roughness of your hands. you worked hard. these were the most important things about you.

so i stay with them.

chocolate, coconut, crunchie bars, shea butter, sweat. i am reminded of you daily. my imprint. you let me kiss you first and we pretended that it was the first time, when after the first time there was the tingle, the spark, the stars that passed from you to me. i became blind and mute and deaf to anyone else’s words but yours, even when you were not speaking.

let’s go back.

can i be on top, in front, you behind, always inside, the twang in my gut, the twitch below my pelvis. that stroke and pull and once a slap on low cheek in excitement. even when you were naked i wanted to rip your clothes off.

could i want you that much? that badly? that desperately?

you gave me life and did not notice when you took it away. i always missed you. no one else compared. can we be something more please? more what, more here. be here now. pull me into you. i doth protest so much because to be quiet around you would be letting you consume me whole.

how could i miss you in my throat? holding a thick, long breath, the breadth of you, wanting to please and hold you all inside, hands full, mouth full, heart and desire full. the only man who could bring me to my knees and make me beg him to do it again.

can we fuck again?

no, it won’t be the same. time has moved us, moved our bodies away from that moment. but in that moment, i could not love anyone but you. you drove me as you rode me, mouth on neck and hands clasped tightly, as if both afraid that if we let go, we would lose ground and fly away.

stay in it, we said. stay in it for hours.

could not wait to see you and see you again. why not night after night? we christened the bed and christened the bed and Christ, did you know how to baptise.

can i be muscle and fat and breasts and dick and your mouth and my tongue and everything in-between the cracks. nothing was off limits except the rest of the world. sometimes i see you at night, a warm glow around you as you kneel over me, i am stroking your waists, then holding them tightly, legs lifted and open sesame for you to enter.

and boy, did you know how to make an entrance.

i was a lavish entryway by the end, chandeliers and marble floors awaiting your next visit, your return.

can i be done with this ever? can we be done with this ever?

Avenue like a vale. Full darkness on warm nights with quiet fingers.

But if you're like this then it must be so - why did you kiss that girl, in the bathroom with the blonde hair who talked too much? It wasn't really about her.

Underneath all this strength lies the heart of someone not wanting to live anymore. Things are wrong now, broken, smile more, remember.

She said it's our game. Wear a dress not those, stop frowning. Always day dreaming about something, such a weird kid.

And crack that whip.

I always feel better when I move away from where I usually am

What is it like?

Like extending the rope

Pulling on elastic

Hoping you spring back but not yet

Not yet.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm holding on to something besides myself

I speak to God very quietly

In private conversation with the voice in my head

What's that you said?

Yes.

Yes, I wish I were doing better.

Questions of good and bad roam around me

Can you hurt someone by saving yourself?

Must you always communicate when you know you won't be understood?

What is growing up and setting boundaries?

My mind is a trash basket of old things and unfinished sentences

Poured out on the middle of the floor

The trash makes a new thing

I'm unsure if it's me