Episode 07: My Encounter With an Iwo Girl and My Experience

I dropped the phone, got into my birthday suit, went into the bathtub, and sank myself in the water and quietly cried as all the beautiful moments we had together vividly played in my memory. Also, I kept crying and forcing myself not to believe all the nonsense I’ve heard. I wanted to believe she was going to call me back and tell me everything was fine. I stayed in the water for an hour or so and I was beginning to shiver from the cold. My dad and mom knew better, they left me to mourn to my satisfaction, they would not interrupt me and they would stop keeping an eye either.

I dragged myself out of the thus shivering like hell and sobbing so badly I wish I’d died too. I wanted to get drunk maybe it would ease the pain in my heart but I knew better, I knew Mariam wouldn’t like it, she wouldn’t have let me drink myself to stupor for anything. She was strong and brave, she beautiful and mild, she was intelligent and everything any man would have wanted, she had come into my life with a touch of love I never had never would have again and changed my life and just like a splitter against the rain; she was taken from me.

I dragged myself to my bed, fell on it, and sank into my sadness. I broke into deeper tears and prayed I died again and again but death wasn’t coming forth. Then, I turned around stared at my ceiling and then I received a message on my phone and my automatic reader picked and read it aloud to me.

READ ALSO: Episode 04: My Encounter With an Iwo Girl and My Experience

It went like this; “Dear friend, there was no way I could have gotten the courage to tell you what happened, I was devastated, I was in shock myself, I was lost in the whole saga and didn’t know that to do, I didn’t want to believe it either but as time goes on reality has sunk me and now I think you need to know what happened.

I went to Mariam’s home as you’ve asked me to help you do, and I met a scary number of people at their house, I greeted them and asked after Mariam, and they all went silent as though I had asked for some impossibility. After, a short lacuna one of them said, she was in the hospital, that she had fainted the night of the day we left their place and she was being hospitalized since then.

I asked for the hospital’s address and again another lacuna kicked in but eventually, I got it. Bro, on getting to the hospital, it was Mariam’s mother’s voice I was hearing, she was crying bitterly and everyone too was crying, and I didn’t know who to approach. I saw a younger lady and moved towards her and asked what happened. She told me Mariam had taken three wraps of locally made rat poison, and almost a bottle of kerosene. She was rushed to the hospital but she gave up at around 5:25 PM the evening of today. I am sorry bro, I didn’t know what I could have said, I am so sorry. Please take heart.”

READ ALSO: Episode 05: My Encounter With an Iwo Girl and My Experience

My mom and dad were already at the door and they listened to every bit of it, I raised my body and it ached so much I felt I was pushed off a moving car. My crying had grown louder and I looked at my mom, she was crying too, my dad couldn’t hold it too. “Mom you know, I should have stayed in Iwo, I should have asked her to follow me, I shouldn’t have left her there, I should have stayed with her,”  I lamented. “You wouldn’t have known darling, you wouldn’t have known, and it’s not your fault,” she replied.

I slammed my body back in bed and cried and ocean.

03/05/2019. Today’s Mariam’s birthday but today It’s all over, I  am celebrating her, I am mourning her – I am remembering her.

Her father is probably in a mosque right now waiting to perform his daily prayers; I wonder how God has been so calm with people of his nature.

THE END

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About The Writer

Olamide Yakub Lateef is 26 years old. I am Yoruba, I’m 5ft5 tall and I hail from Osun State and I’m an indigene of Iwo. I am an undergraduate student majoring in computer science at the online University of the People, CA, USA. I’m a lover of writing, I’m a poet and I love to take tasks the same reason I’m into programming.

I started conscious writing when I was a little above sixteen years old; that was when I first wrote my first poem. I’ve been writing since then, I’ve written many unpublished poems, short articles and few proses. I love to write because it’s the easiest way for me to relax after I might have written a few lines of codes in programming and by telling stories I feel like I’m building my very own universe.

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