Black Espresso

It is raining outdoors but the solar is even now substantial up in the sky, golden and round. I can hear the children downstairs singing-

“It is raining, the sunlight is shinning. There is a boil on the tortoise anus”.

I am in father’s study. A room filled with guides, peaceful and grave with know-how. There are loads of paintings on the wall, a picket desk at a corner, a fluorescent bulb lights the home a minor. This is not wherever I examine, this is not wherever I produce, this is in which I cry.

But this is where by father writes, this is in which father experienced created for 20 year, this is the place he had been creating considering the fact that mom left. This is also wherever he talks to himself a good deal. I occasionally pay attention at the door, my seven yr aged toes lifted a tiny. His text are generally incomprehensible. And any time I seemed through the keyhole, I see him smiling into space. Father has heaps of literary works to his credit rating, tons of awards that came with shiny prizes. Mother experienced as soon as referred to as him “a loaded old writer who talked to himself a ton” in a feat of moderate discomfort. But I experienced never comprehended why mom left. So I was remaining with father, his books and his brown ceramic mug I served him coffee with each and every morning.

Father failed to treatment much about his prosperity- his lands in Isolo, Ikeja and Oshodi. His fleet of vehicles, his several accounts bulky with naira notes. Yrs following mother remaining, he had composed additional often, being as well extensive in his study and I experienced fearful he did not get sufficient rest nor foodstuff nor clean air.
But I experienced lived the affluent existence, the funds enabled daily life, smiling by instruction with ease, having a task at a organization and heading on vacations at will. And one evening, I had returned and found father in his examine, bent around his guides, lifeless. His morning coffee now cold and black and I experienced regarded I would endlessly dislike espresso. But I hadn’t observed the tears roll down my eyes, the slimy catarrh slip past my nostrils around my mouth. I experienced walked out to the verandah and appeared into the streets, to the folks who have for many yrs seemed up to this mansion father had developed in admiration. I had cried at the verandah and allow the environment see my tears.

It has been four many years due to the fact father died but I still return from get the job done and examine his review. I continue to listen at the doorway to hear his soliloquy and if everything is silent, I stroll in, shut the doorway, sit at a corner and cry.

So on this sunny-rainy afternoon, even though the kids sing downstairs, I sit in a corner of the place, on the bare ground thinking about father, about how strangers would consider my lifestyle it is all-natural for people to really feel jealous of the loaded, to imagine the everyday living of the loaded, their decisions- what they like and what they dislike. To experience uncertain if they use the bathroom or not. But folks never consider the loaded have feelings, that their thoughts could be expressed by way of tears. That they could cry. That they do cry.

I start out to cry. The tears are scorching and salty. I do not know why I tasted it. I do not observe the rain has stopped. But I am in fathers examine and am sure of 1 detail- the earth will by no means see my tears again.