The smell of squashed almonds on the street. The crescent moon is getting fuller. Her hands are extensions of the wind, the girl. The girl with a cropped rainbow for hair. The way she swings her arms like she is trying to settle a loan before it accrues interest. The girl I have watched for this long. She has never said a word that is not music. In her maxi skirts and crop-tops, she is always walking. Forward. Forward. Until the darkness eats her whole. Then she emerges from its belly once more. Reminds me of a Bible story. Was it Jonah? No. No. Noah. He was swallowed, yes. My head is still correct. Last semester, her hair was golden, a mix of honey. Then it was blonde. Then deep-sea blue. Now it’s bright ginger, it’s exciting to watch. Sometimes I pile up the colors of her hair to form a rainbow. It’s a queer rainbow. She’s a queer girl. Her blood could be cyan, and her kiss cyanide. Hehe. See what I did there? I am a smart guy. I should start going for classes again. But I’ve got the devil, and I’ve got smoke. The devil does not let you go. Even in church, he had me thinking of how the Pastor’s head would fare on a stainless tray. You don’t let smoke go, because there’s always something to burn. When you raze your pain down to ashes, you have to continue, you can’t trust ash. You have to burn and burn until there’s nothing left, and then you need to burn the nothing. You have to save yourself, even the worst rappers know.
She walks into the mouth of darkness again—away from the dull street lamps; her skirt is the color of beach sand. She does a dance that makes me want to be part of the music—two hands swinging at her back, and the rest of her body moving in all directions. Her head swinging like she’s trying to shake something off it. I wonder if she knows the devil. This girl with bright ginger hair, she does not act like she knows the devil is on the streets. In the mud. In the shadows of the trees. Even in the almonds that she steps on. Maybe on the hem of her skirt. Devil. Devil. Sometimes sweet, sometimes sour. I light my fifth wrap of smoke and dust my jeans. I should start going to classes again. There’s a scheduled lecture on African Fiction, 9 a.m. Sharp, I should warn her of the devil first. Ironically, she stops a bit in front of Christ Church, sits on the walkway and crosses her legs. Mmm…she would look bald in red-light, hehe. I get up from where I’m sitting—the iron benches in front of the Economics department building. I begin to walk towards her. The girl that looks like a dream. Alté vibe girl. Bongo skirt girl. Fine girl. Small waist girl. Shakira girl. I think my smoke will scare her, but I don’t stop burning for anything. The inside of me is a war with no armistice. You don’t drop your guns for nothing. You don’t leave your fire unstoked or the enemy will drown you in your own blood. In your own spittle. The devil is an angel compared to the enemy, even the stupidest cult knows this. What I’m fighting, the devil is just an extension of it.
When I get closer, I know there’s something wrong with this girl—her face is a lake in a town with no children. So calm. Too calm. She looks on at me, like my war is tinko tinko, and like she has fucked the devil too often to care about him. She flicks off one ear of her earphones, and smiles.
“Good evening,” She says and stands. So calm. Too calm. The wind rustles the leaves of the tree we are both under. The girl with a cropped rainbow for hair stands on the tips of her toes and reaches for my smoke. I stand like I have seen a ghost in a mirror. The chaos in my head is making it swell. She is puffing smoke upwards into my face, and the devil is suggesting that I squeeze her neck until she understands that even in dictionaries war is never close to calm. Calm is at the beginning and war is the end. I should really go for classes again. Stupid. Fuck. Reach for your gun, soldier. Protect your neck or you lose your head. Left. Right. Left. right. If she left, she’s right. Go. I grab her neck and squeeze, raising her up into the air. Not afraid if she screams because everyone else is afraid, or in night classes pretending to read while they doze off. Her flat cold stomach. Her waist chain. Her cold eyes, a dagger stabbing at my eyes. There’s something wrong with this girl. I take my smoke back. Begin to burn before theenemytakesoverthedeviltakesoverme. In between gasps, Shakira girl says something that sounds like, “I’ve been waiting for you.” Her breath smells like sweets. Lactose. Like the devil. She has not just fucked the devil. She is. She is the devil. Smells like war. Like the music is her bazooka. Like she has been at war for so long, she can kill by just speaking. Like she wants death to creep into her maxi skirt like a cockroach. I don’t stop burning for anything. African Fiction. 9 a.m. I let her go, her body is red-hot coal. I turn around and walk as fast as I can, into the other mouth of darkness.
James-Ibe Chinaza is a person, a writer, and so many other things she does not know yet. She is a drunken lover of music, photography and sunsets. She writes poetry to save herself, and prose, to become. Her stories can be found on Brittlepaper, Agbowo, Fiery Scribe, Kalahari Review, and elsewhere. Chinaza currently serves as the Associate prose editor for The Muse Journal No. 51. She exists on Facebook as James-Ibe Chinaza, and on Instagram as yellowin_teeth.
