‘The Price’ by Damilola Ogunremi

The Price

by Damilola Ogunremi

Observing a spear of summer grass outside my little cottage

The gentle blowing breeze leaned towards me

Brushing my aching cheeks with its feathery fingers

It peered into my heavy heart

Whispering Sunshine…

The solemn word of harvest…

The beginning of all that is fruitful and beautiful...

“Sunshine,” the word rang in my ears and strangely haunting.

The season of harvest has found me. I knew the excitement of it.

It was over hundred decades since it finished with me

And my every waking moment has been swirling sorrow.

“Sunshine!” I swayed a hand flying above my head to grip my hair in grief.

I should be joyous for this remembrance of freedom from pains

But my heart was with a shuddering heaviness.

For one brief moment, the breeze whispered to me again.

“Sunshine” I remember you well.

It hadn’t been a dreadful mistake for you to remember me.

For the moment the air chattered “Sunshine,” like women in the market

I closed my eyes to blot out the memories of shame and failure

That has plagued and trapped me for decades of heavy wetness.

I bit my lip and screamed the word

“Tears_”

The severe sacrifice; the price I paid for Sunshine to find me.

The price we all sometimes pay

The ancient water that left its streaks of wet print on my face

Images that masked the beauty of my youth

And kept me out of the circle of mental and spiritual forms of love

Though the sorrow may last for a night,

It is supplanted with joy in the morning …

A true tale…

That was my consoling song of then and my testimony of now.

My only pain in these past years, of failure, grief and stagnancy, was the rape of time.

The price I paid.

I gave a quick hug to the breeze of good news.

“Sunshine,” how nice it was!

I swallowed hard, tears of joy prickling dangerously in my eyes.

I would no longer Pay The Price of Painful Tears.