Love at first swipe | Poetry
Fighting love
is like killing mosquitoes
Try as hard as you may to drive them away
Like an insolvent creditor, they keep coming back
But, unlike the Anopheles that can’t help it
Love doesn’t buzz annoyingly in your ears. No.
It starts with a dance that holds your eyes captive
For 30 seconds — or less
At first, you dismiss the thought as childish
But find yourself sticking your finger to the screen of your smartphone
Bringing your thumbs together and then drawing them apart to zoom in
Staring. Gleaning. Drooling.
Absorbing all the details
Those your eyes can see and the ones your mind, like an x-ray machine, is quick to unravel
This is no ordinary WhatsApp story, you mutter
This must be the Queen of Fairy Tales… too good to be true
The image dies after five seconds
Nudging you back into a reality of sweaty solitude
But you pay no heed
So, again, you breathe life into it by swiping back in time
With your fingers you extend its lifespan
And welcome all the contours and glitters
Into the innermost chambers of your mind
You’ve been here before
You know this frenzy will be short-lived … like the legendary Anopheles
And, two weeks from the first “hi”, you’ll be born again as strangers
— to you at least
You have the entire script spread out on the conference table of memory
Like the map of Africa at the Berlin Conference
But either you’ve run out of spare fucks
Or a tiny, glowy part of you hopes History has
Finally escaped that Sisyphean loop of self-repetition
About ten minutes and a hundred deep breaths later
Your heart still racing like a generator with lung cancer
You finally muster enough courage to swipe up and ask
“Chairman, who be this fine babe?
“Abeg help me with her number make I follow am talk now.”
With a whisper and two soft taps on your breast
Again you assure your nervous heart that
“It will be different this time”
