Sue sat on a high chair in front of the dirt-stained window watching the wavy lines of the canal that flowed past her apartment building. When she had the time, she’d sit and watch as people came out to fish or feed bread to the swans. At other times, she’d watch kayakers as they paddled on the body of water several times in a row.

This time, there was nobody throwing out their fishing rod in the water nor swans to be fed. The kayakers were nowhere to be found. They showed up mostly on Saturdays and it was a cold Monday afternoon. There was nothing to watch other than the naked trees and brown grass that surrounded the canal. There were sprouts of yellow flowers on one side of the grass, but not enough to cover up for the aridness that came with winter.

She envied the stillness that characterised the world before her. The trees danced in a gentle fashion to the tune of the wind. The birds went about their business as they flew across the window and away; they were on a mission for their daily bread. But here she sat, looking for means to distract her mind from the million thoughts running amok and the blank screen staring her in the face.

For the over thirty minutes since she turned on her laptop, she’d managed to type in only one word—the name of the character she wanted to write about. She squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her fingertips over them before fluttering them open. She typed in a few more words and formed a sentence. She was making a bit of progress on the white page, but her thoughts were all over the place, unable to run still.

The feeling had engulfed her again. She slept on it and woke to it. She couldn’t shake it off despite how hard she’d tried. She’d fought it. She’d tried to drown it with music. She wanted to push it to the deepest darkest corners of her heart where it had no capacity to affect her the way it did today, but it had a way of bubbling to the surface, riding on her emotions. It had been going on for a few weeks now.

A swan swam across digging its head into the water in search of its prey. She watched as it dipped its head in and out, forgetting the thoughts plaguing her mind temporarily. She typed in a few more words which turned her sentence into a paragraph, before succumbing to the voices playing in her head.

She first saw Steve at a poetry workshop about two months ago. He was like every other guy in the class. Not too tall, not too short. A bushy beard and a full afro were the only things that stood him out. She’d paid him no mind. She’d promised herself not to catch feelings for anyone. She just wasn’t ready, or so she thought.

The past months had been a handful for her. Her DMs were filled with unsolicited messages. One had badgered her for pictures. When she made a post, he’ll text telling her it was her face people wanted to see, not quotes. Another sent her a message one morning threatening to call her if she refused to respond to his chats. She blocked them all.

For as long as Sue could remember, she’d been closed off to the idea of seeing someone. Each time she was asked who ‘the one’ was, she’d shrug and say she wasn’t ready and she’d know when the time was right. She’d heard things like ‘your standards are too high’, ‘people like you tend to chase men away’, ‘you need to be more accommodating’, and all other forms of ‘advice’ geared towards her getting a man for herself. She ignored. She knew what she wanted.  

The workshop organiser paired her with Steve for one of the projects and that was how it started. They were to analyse a series of poems by an English poet and write in response to what they’d read. While talking about what they felt about each poem, a brief silence hung like a noiseless clock between them. Sue took a deep breath, fiddled with the silver ball pen in her hand, and tapped on the booklet. Steve smiled, clearing his throat. He scratched the back of his neck and returned to the page. They continued their discussion.

The feelings crawled up on her, and like a spider, spun their webs across her heart. Her first few months of smothering what she felt for Steve was an epic fail despite not seeing him after the workshop was over. The more she tried to unravel the puzzle in her mind, the harder it was to shake off.

She texted her group of friends and the teasing wouldn’t stop.

I thought you were unfeeling

See your ‘hard girl hard girl’ rolling in the mud

So you can catch feelings.

Their comments were not helping matters. She thought they’d give her 10 ways to…

The feelings dug deeper as time ticked. She’d managed to suppress it. That afternoon she wanted to embrace it, but she wasn’t expecting it to consume her the way it did. She wanted to sort through her emotions slowly, not go head straight into it.  But the way it engulfed her was unsettling.  

She stood up from her place at the window and took a long walk along the footpath dividing the canal and other blocks of building on the other side. A blue sky, mild sunshine, and chill air were her antidote to a clouded mind. She wanted it to work its magic again—this time around, to get her mind off Steve so she could focus on the piece she was writing. It didn’t work. It heightened. She caved in and allowed her mind to take over. She walked another route, brushing her fingers across the bare branches of the trees that arranged themselves along the pathway.

She got back to her position in front of the window and picked up her phone. If the walk couldn’t cure her, her phone should help. She took a stroll on the streets of Instagram and as if there was a conspiracy against her that day, she was bumping into lovey-dovey pictures of couples with ‘how I found the girl’, ‘he’s the one for me’ as captions.

Defeated, she turned to her laptop and ran her fingers weary punching the keypad. Something had to give, and it wasn’t her. She turned how she felt the whole day into a story. What started as a word had turned into a sentence, and taken up wings into a paragraph. By the time she was done, her erstwhile blank screen had become two pages. She let out a sigh—respite at last.

Oluwakemi.

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