We Best Friends

          Celine has always been my dream girl. she has always been the girl that makes my heart skip a beat. Forget the whole bestie thing. This is the 21st century and we know males and females cannot just be friends without something happening and in my case, it is so. Celine and I grew up together in the same neighbourhood and while her mother and mine were best of friends, our both fathers were colleagues at work. Our friendship started when my mum asked me to accompany her to visit a friend. I was six years old and she was four. On getting there, I figured out Celine was an only child and boredom was a usual comfort to her as sometimes, all her toys even made her cry. Mum asked me to go play with her after I had been given my Caprisone and we did play. Soon, we began visiting each other often and gradually, became best of friends. 

          Seventeen years after, I'm still here, falling in love with her as the day goes by. Drowning in the ocean of love whose current was quickly snuffing out life from me. I was sinking knee deep into the quicksand of the love I had for her. No other girl seemed to compare to her. Being around her was everything I needed and her laugh which resonated in my head hours after it had ended was the best kind of music I knew. I loved her smile as it coloured my day with the brightest hues and I felt like I had reached heaven when she gave me that big hug she called the "one and only 360 hug". I had watched her grow into a perfect shaped woman, inside out. Her perfect lips which I have always longed to enclose in mine and her beautiful eyes which took me on a journey to UPENDI. I was in love with Celine and I have always been in love with her. 

          However, I didn't know how to tell her. She would run home to me most times and give me all the gist about the day or about something and she would talk on and on and on and I would just be there loving her and going wacko for her. I didn't know if she felt the same way towards me or was just really bent on best-friend-zoning me forever. I knew how to woo any other thing on skirt and she knew how to change boyfriends like her lipstick colour. I could tell her anything but the words, "I love you" seized to come out of my mouth even in the most insane moments. I didn't know how to say it and the first time I tried, she replied that she loved me too as the best friend and only brother she knew. I was broken. She didn't know or just decided to choose not to know that I was mad over her. This whole best friend thing had killed me and today of all days when as she said "I should be the happiest guy on earth" I was the most heartbroken one. I couldn't help it. 

          "You may now kiss your bride", the officiating priest said to Celine and her Beau, Jackson as they had finished exchanging vows. At that point, I knew I had lost and was going to be a lonely man forever because I had lost the best thing in my life for fear of being rejected. Because I couldn't open up!

We Have Nothing

It is another Tuesday afternoon and we have visitors again. Every Tuesday, it is a norm to see people trooping in and out of the home as if there is a circus going on or something. Big Mummy takes these flock of visitors from house to house and from room to room, showing them the facilities the home has and the ones it lacks. Every Tuesday, we are fed an hour earlier than our usual time for lunch so that we will get dressed and look all clean and pretty and handsome because "who knows, one of you beautiful children might be adopted today!" accordning to Big Mummy.  I have never been able to understand why she is always very excited during the visiting days when we are displayed to hundreds of people for them to make their choice as if we are some pieces of fine jewellery in the market up for sale. Maybe it reduces her burden or maybe she is just tired of seeing our faces. I cant even find something hurtful to say about her because she is a darling to all of us here and I bet you, my dear reader that you will not understand what I mean until you become orphaned, rejected or dumped by your original parents in a motherless babies home or an orphanage as it is called. I also never really loved the idea of getting adopted because heaven knows where you might get taken to! However, my mindset changed when my best friend in the home, Uju got adopted by a childless multi millionaire! 

One month later, Uju came back looking all beautiful and pimped. A driver even brought her to the home. Common Uju! You needed to see my surprise when I saw her looking all radiant. Infact, her English had improved and at that moment, I envied her and wanted to be adopted too. I suddenly put on my best behaviour during all the Tuesday visits, making sure I paid sweet comments to every good looking, rich looking female that came around. After all, that's how Uju got adopted. I even went the extra mile by helping them hold unto their bags or offer them seats when they came around. Sometimes, I got quite clingy to some who were amazingly pretty. I did all these just to the females because it was the same way Uju got adopted. 

Today, however, I have put on that beautiful pink dress that Uju got for me. The last time she came to see me, she told me that if I looked all girly, potential mothers will get attracted to me more and she also said I should smile and never sulk because it pisses them off and, the truly rich people are the ones that entered with only a designer purse, holding unto their husbands and looking regal. Plus, I must keep my eyes out for the women with car keys and car keys were only a set of two keys or just one. Uju told me that if the woman was flinging the key anyhow, she was going to be "wicked anyhow" but, if she wore the key on her small finger, it meant she wasn't a show off and she would be a good mother. 

Right now, I'm practising my new killer smile. I have already packed my hair to the back and I'm reading a book so that I will impress the visitors. I think Big Mummy is calling me now. Let me go and see if anybody wants to adopt me yet...

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This is for every orphan in the world. I do not know who you are or why you are an orphan, but I know that somehow I feel your pains and I pray that you get adopted by well meaning people.

Victoria Nelson.

High Tension

         

          I clasped my hand firmly around her frail own as I looked into her eyes. She couldn't say any words and wasn't even attempting movement of any kind. She was static and unmoving and all the adjectives used to qualify stillness. She was fine now and according to the doctor in charge, in a matter of days, she would be discharged. I continued staring at her, imagining all that I would do for her once she was fully recovered. How I would do everything to make her happy and how I would give up my life and probably be in her present condition if it would save her from any pain when I felt my stomach grumble. I knew it was hunger and as an ulcer patient, I wasn't supposed to joke with my stomach. So, even though I didn't want to go, I had to finally stand up, place her weak right hand on the right side of the bed and place a quick kiss on her forehead. Next thing, I dashed off to get something to eat and dashed back immediately. What I saw when I returned back to the room threw me off balance so that I didn't know when my food fell off my hands...