Snail Crossing
I have abided here too long
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Dear Bolu,
My spirit breathes as I walk the circuit of houses in the neighbourhood for the last time. It’s a familiar walk: long, aimless, and freeing from the suffocation of my own insignificance. I kick a pebble on my path and watch it skitter across the uneven sandy road. I go where it goes, and I kick it again. I kick and follow till I can’t anymore—till it lands in the gutter on the side of the road. Only then do I kick another pebble, lending significance to each one till it’s in the gutter beneath me—or perhaps just beside.
I pause to take in the night sky; it’s clear. I look at the moon. The moon looks away.
“You too?” I chuckle.
They always look away, celestial or not. It’s something on my face. I tried to rub it out, but my hand only grew sore. The barber’s handbook prescribes thirty-five different faces. Mine is number two. It figures. I took it all off, and now I’m shiny from the top of my head to the bottom of my chin. Now they don’t even look at all.
The memory arrives unprompted: “My head? You know it’d grow back, right?” I plead, searching for her elusive eyes.
“I’m not talking about what’s on it, but what’s inside, or rather, what isn—” she says. She doesn’t finish. She doesn’t have to. We are finished.
They always look away. It’s in my head, and I can’t think straight. Maybe it’s in my back, too, in how I carry myself. I’m a question mark even when I stand straight. Unsteady. Unsure. Or what do you think?
I approach the widest road in the circuit, and my eyes catch a man in an agbada that disappears into the black of the Chrysler he leans against. I’ve heard stories about him since I was boy enough to believe everything Maman said. She said that he takes anything he touches, or touches anything that’s been taken. I’m not sure. Before cars, he rode a black horse, and before then, he walked the earth. His eyes, barely peeking out from underneath his hat, follow me intently as I walk past the bungalow opposite his Chrysler. There will be cries of pain, and perhaps mourning, soon.
Up ahead, I stop short of kicking a pebble in the middle of the road when I notice it moving. It’s a small snail crossing the road.
“Why did the snail cross the road?” I wonder if anyone has ever asked that.
Perhaps there’s a party on the other side of the road. Its lover may be lying in wait, or it is out searching for better fortunes.
Its movements are imperceptible from one moment to the next, but it lugs itself across gracefully, almost painfully, too. It’d take at least one more hour to get to the other side.
“You’d move faster if only you came out of that shell,” I say to the little brown mollusc. I say to myself.
“I’d lose myself if I did that,” it says to me.
“Besides, whoever said I was in a hurry?” it adds.
Coming back around, the Chrysler and the man are gone. The snail is gone, too. All that remains is a scattering of broken shell, organs, and tentacles, crushed beneath the imprint of tire marks. It must have let out a cry at the end.
I mourn the snail tonight, but tomorrow—tomorrow, I say goodbye to this place. I have abided here too long. Tomorrow I cross the road, and when I do, I must hurry. I must hurry to you, dear friend.
Fin.
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- Wolemercy