Faé sat down on the slab of concrete decorating the corner and settled in to wait. She hated waiting. Patience was one of the virtues she lacked.

She had always hated waiting in any way, shape, or form. But looking at her you would never know this, she always had an outward calm, but INWARDS?! Inwards, her mind was going crazy. The real reason she hated waiting was because of her mind. If she was not distracted then her loud musings, the sleeping beast awoke. Her mind became a loud maze of thoughts that she quickly got lost in. She never found the middle of the maze where a zen fountain probably awaited, he would even settle for finding her way out.

She always kept busy watching a movie or reading a book when she had to wait. But she had left her phone back at home because she had not expected to wait when her aunt sent her on this errand. It must have been the urgency in her voice that made Faé dash out of the house without her phone.

Faé went everywhere, with her phone. No kidding, she took her phone with her to every single place she had to be. Even the toilet, especially the toilet.

She knew that she could always race back home to get it but it felt like a waste of time. Plus, she knew that her aunt would be full of questions about why Faé was back sans what she had been sent to do. And what would she say?

“I'm not done I just came to get my phone. Because I hate waiting.” Faé mentally snorted after she said the thought of the words.

She could see her aunt's reaction clear as day like a scene from a movie. The slash of her lips as her smile turned into a frown. Faé would probably smile or chuckle awkwardly then race to her room to grab her phone and race back to where she was supposed to be waiting. Scolding herself for coming back all the way. Nope, best wait.

Faé yawned as the tiredness she tried to keep at bay swept through her. She should have slept as soon as she got home in the afternoon. She should have not pushed it until later, because needed all the sleep she could get. She had to be up late into the night today and worse still she had to wake up as early as five am tomorrow because school was back in session. Work started again tomorrow, no more going back to sleep after turning off her alarm.

She sighed and stifled another yawn that besieged her as her mind began whispering. She hated being alone with her thoughts unless she was imagining a story. She tried to coral her thoughts but like spooked wild horses, they refused to stay calm. So she gave up on corralling them and redirected her mind.

She slowed her breathing and closed her eyes. The breeze nipped at her bare arms, making her wish she had grabbed her hoodie on the way out. But she hadn't expected the front stoop to be this windy, just like she hadn't expected the wait. The area in front of the house was surrounded by trees, the evening wind played with them sending a chill breeze her way.

The breathing technique seemed to work. Her breath was coming out in steady puffs and her mind was almost calm. It was in that state of almost calm that she heard it. Waves?! She could hear the waves crashing on each other.

If not for the concrete under her feet, Faé would have believed that she had been magically transported to the beach. Sand under her feet, the salty spray of the water on her face.

She almost opened her eyes to find out, if she hadn't been transported to a beach. Maybe her angels had ferried her from her perch on the concrete slab to the sandy beach. But she refused to disturb her enjoyment.

Her active imagination took over and soon Faé was skipping along the sandy path, leaping out of the path of the waves, and swimming in the beach. More like drowning, her imagination was confused. Imagination Faé must have forgotten that Faé didn't know to swim. She chuckled mentally as she remembered that imagination was not reality.

But seriously, what was going on? Why was she hearing beach sounds in the concrete jungle?

Faé popped her eyes open with a frown. Yep, she was still in the concrete jungle. She closed her eyes and focused on her breathing again, once her mind was quiet the sounds began to filter in again and she was back on the beach.

Reluctantly she dragged her eyes open again, she just had to know where the sound was coming from. She looked around the compound, examining the front stoop. Her eyes snagged the palm trees that spread their fronds over the fence. Could that be the cause? Does a palm tree sound like the beach? She couldn't remember.

Maybe it was the other trees on the compound. Or was it the breeze rustling through them that made them sound like that? Faé had zero ideas. She gave up her investigation, folded her chest over her lap returning to her comfortable position.

Who cared where the sound came from anyway? She was going to focus on the fact that it came and it was doing its work. It was calming her otherwise anxious heart. She was going to consider it to be a gift from God and enjoy it. No need to start investigating the source.

Faé returned to her concrete beach, ferried to the peaceful spot by the sound filtering away the noise.

The sound began to lull her to sleep when another sound interrupted her bliss and brought her back to reality.

“Customer?!” the person she was waiting for called. “You don sleep?”

Faé dragged her tired eyes open and turned to her ‘customer’, her fake smile painted on her face, ready to reassure him that no, she was not asleep. Contrary to what it looked like.

As soon as her customer was assured that she had not dozed off on him, he went back to his work and Faé went back to her concrete beach.

Now if only she could figure out a way to carry the beach with her always.

© 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Fae was constantly cleaning up messes, 99.999 percent of the messes that required her cleaning expertise were hers. The phrase commonly used to describe her is clumsy af-as Fae. Not the other f you were thinking about. Whenever someone complained about someone being clumsy around her friends, they would laugh and say not clumsy af, no one was as clumsy as Fae. And it quickly became a thing.

This tendency to stumble was one of the biggest reasons Fae hated and avoided the kitchen. That beautiful room overlooking their backyard garden, individually housed all the sharp, breakable, and hot stuff that could potentially harm or maim a forever stumbling block. She didn’t have enough body parts to count all the times she had broken something in the kitchen, many a glass cup had met the trash courtesy of clumsy Fae. Or the number of times she had done bodily harm to herself. Just last week, she had grabbed the sharp part of the knife, for God knows what reason. The knife was not very sharp thank God, so she had gotten away with nary a scratch. Then the other day she had mistaken her finger for the onion she was slicing and inflicted bloody pain on her poor finger.

Once while preparing ogi (pap), she lost grasp of the omorogun (pestle) and it landed smack dab on her feet, smearing her feet with the hot yellow mash. It missed the floor by an inch. It was so hot, Fae got a burn. Who knew you could get a burn from hot pap? As if getting a burn on her foot was not bad enough, when she bent down to pick up the pestle, she grabbed the hot side. The side that still held the hot mash that just landed on her feet, getting the steaming hot mash all over her hand. Swallowing the curse word that wanted to spring out of her lips, she tossed the godforsaken pestle into the sink, turned on the tap, and rinsed the mash away. The cool water started to soothe her stinging palm but her throbbing foot didn’t allow her to enjoy it. She hobbled to the bathroom to rinse the mash away from said feet, the pap still on fire now burning. Yeah, she burnt pap, Pap! She hobbled out of the bathroom and yanked the pot of pap off the fire, burning the skin off her forefinger because she grabbed the hot side of the pot without a napkin.

The clumsiness was made worse by the absentmindedness that also plagued her. Like beauty influencers would say Faé had combination clumsy forgetful skin. Many an ache, injuries, and bleeding had this condition caused. She would start cooking something and forget it was on fire, only remembering when the smell of burnt food reached her nostrils. Then she would race into the kitchen and do something clumsy like grab the hot side of the pot without a napkin. To date, the smell of burning food invoked panic in her.

And to think she once considered herself a graceful, elegant dancer. Not of ballet of course, never ballet. She won't even be able to get her foot to plie without stumbling and landing in a heap of embarrassment on the floor. But she had once considered dance as the solution to clumsiness. She had thought maybe if she learned balance she won't be so clumsy. Dance was all about balance, right? But Faé quickly realized that she could dance and still be clumsy. It just meant she would lose balance and stumble a few times, a forever stumbling block.

But today, for the first time in forever, clumsy Fae was not the one that made a big mess of things. Yeah, she still had to clean it but she didn’t mind. She had not been the one to create it and that made her giddy. The mess was huge, one of gargantuan proportions. The accident had happened in a split second. Fae had been on the other side of the kitchen washing plates to aid the ongoing meal prep.

It was Sunday—efo (vegetable soup) and swallow day. They had branched the market after church let out. Not even waiting for them to share the grace, their neighbourhood was suffering a blackout, it was very unusual for them but it was happening anyway. It was their current reality. So they bought pepper, all 1500 naira of it, and Fae zoomed off to the grinding machine (ele ro) to blend the pepper. It was a divide-and-conquer situation today. Honmi was buying the other ingredients while Fae was in charge of blending the pepper, and that was all Fae was in charge of because if you overloaded clumsy et forgetful Fae with too many activities she could forget half the things that brought her there. And it had happened before multiple times to be exact. She once blended pepper in the market then promptly forgot it at the blender's shop as she went about her other market runs. Or the time she bought pepper and forgot it at her customer’s stall. Thank God she traveled in front of his shop before she returned home. He had been the one to call out to her asking if this bundle was hers. She checked her tote bag of goods and confirmed that yes her pepper was not in the bag. No wonder it wasn’t as heavy. Combination clumsy forgetful skin!

The only good thing about this condition was that Fae forgot all the clumsy things that happened as soon as they occur.

This is why Fae had the most comprehensive market lists ever. Her market list mimicked her movement along the market, meaning she wrote the list according to what was done first. So pepper was always first on the list because the pepper seller’s stall was the first one encountered. Everything that needed to be done in and around the market went on this list. So if she needed to withdraw some cash for all the things to be bought, she wrote it down. If she needed to find out the price of something but not buy it, it went on the list with specifics. She always did one final read-through before she left the market. Always!

Honmi, the resident chef of the family, grabbed the cellophane filled with red liquid carefully, then cut into it with scissors. She grabbed the pot she would pour the liquid into, she was holding the pot in one hand, the bag of red in the other. As she moved to place the bag in the pot, the pot slipped out of her hand clinging and clanging over the floor, Fae turned from her perch at the sink to ascertain if all was okay. Horror washed all over my sister's face as the nylon spewed venom poured all over her hands, laps, and the cream tile.

There was a sea of red scattered over their cream tile floor. Their once pristine kitchen now looked like the scene of a very gory murder. Yep, it looked like someone had bled and died all over their kitchen floor. But nothing had died except Fae's hopes and dreams of eating sweet vegetable stew that evening. Fae probably had a reservation in hell for her giddiness over this 1700-naira accident but she didn’t care. For once, it wasn’t her clumsy self that caused the ghastly accident, and that made her downright joyous. She just hoped her giddy excitement wasn’t too obvious, she tried to keep a straight face even though she was doing internal cartwheels of excitement.

Honmi’s face was painted with disbelief, things like this never, ever happened to her. She was so rattled; she took two steps away from the wreck.

“I-I” she stammered her mouth open in shock.

She looked from one end of the kitchen to the other, she didn’t know what to do first. But not Fae. Fae, master in cleaning up messes sprang to action, obeying the first rule of mess cleanup; start immediately.

“Step back,” Fae called out to Honmi. “Go and rinse the pepper off you. I will clean up here.”

But her sister didn’t move, Fae had cleaned up so many messes it didn’t faze her anymore.

“Go and rinse off,” she said as she pulled her sister out of the wreck.

She assessed the mess and decided on the best way to go about cleaning it up. Then she grabbed the needed tools; broom, dustpan, mop, and mop bucket out of the closet then tossed it on the floor. She got to work, scooping the liquid and pouring it into the mop bucket. She scooped and scooped on autopilot, barely holding in the hum that wanted to burst out. While her sister rinsed off the evidence of the crime in the bathroom.

She did a mental wiggle of joy, grabbed the mop bucket, and carted it outside. She rinsed the filthy liquid away and filled it with clean water. Today the bloody mess on the floor was not Fae’s fault. Yes, she still had to clean it up but at least she could glory in the fact that she hadn't made the mess.

“Well done,” Her now clean sister gave her a grateful smile. Fae just smiled in response, this was the first mess she didn’t mind cleaning, she just needed to do one more round of cleaning to make their tile cream again. She tiptoed slowly out of the room, carting the dirty water away carefully. She didn’t trip and pour the water on the floor and had to clean it all over again. That had actually happened to her once, it was a very frustrating process. She was tempted to toss the water in the sink but it was too unsanitary to think of. Tossing this blood-red water in the sink was akin to washing her panties or bloody pad in the kitchen skin. She just couldn’t do it. Plus, her mom would scream bloody murder if she found out. She tossed the dirty water in the bathroom rinsed the bucket and bathroom, and then fetched a little more water to mop the second time.

“You won’t believe what just happened!” She heard her sister calling somebody and recounting what had just transpired, her voice still full of confusion.

“Thank God for Fae,” she said as she rounded off the call. Fae stood in the now clean kitchen unable to keep her giddy smile off her face. Today was a good day to be Clumsy AF because today Clumsy Fae wasn’t clumsy. But being clumsy helped her keep her head straight and clean the mess. Looks like being clumsy Fae was good for something after all.

After the day she had Faé was ready to fall into the unknown land of slumber, but her overstimulated brain refused to shut down. Diverse images began to play in her mind, some in slow motion and others stuck in fast forward. She lay in bed eyes tightly shut, waiting for sleep to ferry her to dawn. But sleep never came, her mind refused to shut down so she just laid there listening to the hours tick away.

She resisted the urge to grab her phone and distract her buzzing mind with a book, maybe a podcast, or some music. Anything to just get the talkative babe in her brain to shut up and go to sleep. But she didn't, she just lay there watching the ceiling and listening to the tick-tock of the clock, echoing in the silent house.

She finally gave up the charade of sleeping at—she checked her phone to confirm the time—2 am! Glad she didn’t have anywhere to go tomorrow, she jumped out of bed, grabbed her phone and journal off the side table; then retreated to the balcony attached to her room. Each room had a private balcony, one of the perks that came with their new apartment. She was finally living out all her balcony dreams.

She plopped her tired body on the light blue well-worn couch that took up most of the space and sunk her feet into the soft faux grass that covered the expanse of the balcony, dropping her phone and journal beside her. Her journal was a heavy-duty leather-bound beauty with a thousand empty sheets waiting for her scribbles. It didn't have lines like other books, it was just empty paper. It was probably a leather sketch pad but it was magnificent. Empty pages just waiting for her inane scribbles, a writer's dream.

She pulled her journal open, thinking of the best way to capture the moment. She closed her eyes again, took a deep breath, and relaxed. Images bombarded her mind and in a flash, her fingers were flying over the page as words poured out of her loud brain and straight to her empty canvas. Words that captured how she felt at that moment.

Soon the steady stream of words stopped, she closed her journal and laid it by her side. Now that her thoughts were out of her head and on paper, she expected to feel tired but she still didn't feel sleepy.

Faé turned her gaze to the night sky spread out before her, taking in the simple grandeur of it. She closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. The stars twinkled in the sky, invoking peace and serenity.

“God you have outdone yourself again!” she whispered to the night sky, soaking in the comfort of the celestials. The night always seemed to comfort her, something about the quiet, the darkness, inspired this feeling of security. She always felt safe under the night sky.

But more than safe, the night sky made her feel seen even heard, by God and the heavenly hosts. The noisy normal of the day just seemed to drown out her voice, but at night the solemn quiet made her feel like her voice echoed loudly in heaven.

She could see the whole city from her balcony. She looked out across the expanse of the city that she could see and gratitude welled up inside of her. God had blessed her and her family, regardless of her worries and complaints, Faé was a blessed woman.

She looked up at the sky again, looking for the moon. Wondering what size it will be today, full or toenail. She loved it when the moon looked like a toenail. But she couldn't see the moon. She stood up from her perch and walked over to the railing, tilting her head as far as she could go but still no moon.

Disappointed, she returned to her perch. Maybe her large building was obscuring the moon from sight. She couldn't see the entire expanse of the sky from this balcony. Yes, she could see the city spread out before her but not the entire sky.

At that moment she missed their home in the country, she missed their wide compound where she could sit for hours on end and just talk to God. Where she had an uninterrupted, three-sixty view of the cosmos. She could see the moon from any angle and the stars shone brightly.

In the city, the bright city lights were competing with the stars. The city lights seemed brighter than the cosmos as they shone into her eyes, almost blinding in their brightness.

She looked away from the bright lights and gazed at the stars, she could do this for hours. She just sat there trapped between the comfort of the celestial and the chaos of her loud thoughts.

However, Faé still didn't feel sleepy and she had a busy day tomorrow. She sighed playing with her hair, thinking of what she could do to invite sleep. She was so tired but she was not sleepy.

Only two things were left to do now, either she just stayed awake running from the loud voices in her head or she listened. How bad can listening be right? What exactly were the loud voices shouting about? After one minute of listening, Faé decided to just talk instead.

So she looked at the sky and poured out her heart to God, her lover. She told him all her fears, concerns, and worries. As she spoke, tears began to flow. She let them, hiccupping her way to a clear mind.

By the time her words ceased, she cleaned her eyes and smiled. She felt better, lighter. Like all her burdens were gone. A yawn overtook her from nowhere and tiredness cloaked her. Looks like Faé would be getting some shuteye after all.

© 2023 All Rights Reserved.

Tan tan tan tan tan tan

The foreign sound echoed in the otherwise quiet house and reached Fae where she lay on her bed, awake but fighting the last vestiges of sleep. Everything was asleep, even the sun that would usher in the new day. She didn't know what time it was, her phone was not close by and she was too lazy to get out of bed and walk over to the table where she charged her phone. She did that so she wouldn't constantly reach for it. Putting a good distance between herself and her devices ensured a good sleep. The only device she slept with was the AirPods currently silent in her ears. She reached in and pulled them out, carefully placing them in their case that sat on her nightstand, making a mental note to plug it in when she got up from her comfy spot. Now she was sure that it was not her AirPods filling her ears with white noise.

She lay back in bed lulled into a sleepy haze when tan tan tan tan tan tan. The sound reached Fae again beckoning her out of sleepiness with its loud ticking. Ticking?! Wait! Is that the clock?

Fae suddenly realised shocked by how loud it was. Was the clock always that loud or did she just notice it because of the stillness of the morning? Of course, she always heard the occasional loud thang that announced the start of a new hour but she had never heard the tick-tock of the clock as the seconds ticked away into minutes and the minutes tocked away into hours. Soon even the loud tick-tock didn't prevent sleep from claiming her in its hazy abyss.

She woke up later to the loud shrill of her alarm alerting her that it was time to get up. She listened to the annoying shrill of her alarm for a while before dragging herself out of the warmth of her covers. She walked over to her table, put off her alarm, and unplugged her phone. Leaving it on the table she walked back to bed and lay in the warmth again. “Just one minute,” she murmured.

As she lay still in bed, the morning noises filtered to her. The loud crone of the iman's morning prayers strained over croaky speakers. The creak creak of beds as their tired visitors vacated them, the slip slap of shuffling feet, the click-clack of a key being turned in the lock, the soft bang of an opened door. The ringing of the bell, as the father wakes his family for morning devotion. The offkey singing of the neighbours as they begin their morning commune with God. The sharp incessant banging of the spoons against pots, as her neighbour's kids tried to make music with cooking equipment. The shri shri of water as it gushed out of the open tap and filled the bucket waiting beneath. The sha sha of a broom striking the concrete floor. The good morning oo echoed in the morning light as neighbours greeted each other. The loud bang of the car door, the soft hum of the engine as the car is started. The raised voices as her neighbours started the first fight of the day, about God knows what. The sounds that ushered in a new day. Still, she cosied into her blanket and tried to fall asleep.

She might have succeeded if not for the smells waffling into her nostrils, waking the sleeping dog of hunger that she laid to rest yesternight. That pepper egg would go so well with yam. The fried plantain will be a good accompaniment to jollof rice or spaghetti. The sweet potato would go so well with some scrambled eggs. As the scent of deliciously cooked meals waffled out of their kitchens and into her room, she was given another reason to hate her neighbours, they were such good cooks. Well, at least their food smelt nice. There was no accounting for taste. Yet, she remained in the sweet comfort of her bed, glad she had nowhere to rush to.

She tried to listen for the tan tan tan of the clock but it was drowned out by the noises around. Everything was back to noisy normal. She wondered what other sounds she missed as she went about her noisy day but she would hear clearly in the stillness.

© 2023 All Rights Reserved.