Back to me.

I need to return myself back to me.

To recover the pieces that I have so generously shared with the world, and in its usual unmerciful self, it gave me nothing in return. Mostly gave me nothing. And since the world abhors vacuums, the emptiness was quickly filled in with tears and anguish.

I need to return myself to me.

And once again feel the girlish excitement of being alive. Of doing things that bring me alive. Excite this little precious soul of mine. Make this battered heart, once again, a place where flowers grow, instead of the weeds that now inhibit it.

I need to return myself back to me.

And laugh endlessly at my own jokes. At the peculiarities of my brain. At the memory of Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s description of that contraption that was transporting souls to Ilmorog for the festival of thieves. And wipe tears as I wonder how Tricia Adoabi is just a mere mortal, yet that’s the only author that has ever made me throw decorum to the wind and howl in laughter in a foreign country, surrounded by my dreams come true. I need to recapture that in new ways.

And as I return myself to me, I am aware of how much of a battered soul i am returning. One that ventured out into the world. And got bitten in the ass while at it. Not once, not twice or thrice.

And as I coil back my tail to in between my legs, may I not regret the tears, but instead celebrate the courage. May I not guilt trip whoever between the soul, heart and mind, thought it a good idea to give ourselves to mere mortals, when we have always known we were made for the gods. May my heart not worry much about how it got here, but about how to grow back wings, and fly on its own.

I want to return myself back to me.

To feel the warmth of being alone. The heat of my own making. The light from my own heart.

I want to return myself back to me.

Because out there, souls never know what to do with mine. They gape at it, pinch at it to see whether it bleeds, partake of it in small amounts as if it’ll poison them if they dare take more. Wonder at it, at how awesome a single thing can be, and then walk away. Dumbfounded. But they still walk away.

And as I look into the crushed pieces in my hands, I know exactly what to do. Its painstaking work. This business of stitching back bits of myself. It requires glue only found in the most pristine of places. It requires needles only found in the middle of other people’s words. It requires warm lights in exquisite dinner places. It requires shutting out voices of what should be, and only listening to me.

But it can be done. We have done it before.

I am returning myself back to me.

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