Feather To Mouth: A Self-Inflicted Bloody Silence
How I Write To Myself Through You, My Butterfly
Feather To Mouth 2023, Official Art Illustration For Sir Pappy Newsletter.
You will agree that there were times when we had to make sacrifices for the sake of the people we loved or had loved, even if it meant putting our own interests aside. But there exists a contrast in our motive because 'what we called love down there was mostly the craving to be loved.' In his book 'The Great Divorce,' C.S. Lewis suggests that what we often mistake for love is actually a desire to be loved by someone else rather than a genuine concern for the other person's well-being. In other words, what we mistake for love is a form of selfishness. So there is no sacrifice at all. Everything we give for love in return is transactional.
In this same vein, I have come to the realization that my letters to you are not about my love for you, or about ending your suffering, but rather a means to end my own. Why do I even think you are in pain? Am I not conceited? Am I not selfish? Why do I have an unhealthy obsession with saving you?
I also think of Judas and how this was the same way he hung himself, a self-inflicted death sentence, like the one you're reading now because his guilt would not end like a full stop.
I Google metaphors for suicide, not because I want to kill myself, but because I want more language for how I feel sometimes. Some of the results are: "Six Metaphors for Suicidal Ideation," "17 Metaphors for Suicidal Ideation," and "The Metaphor That Describes Living in Constant Depression. Then I come across a quote by Sylvia Plath, in her collection "Winter Trees." It says, '...the darkness is leaking from the cracks. I cannot contain it. I cannot contain my life.' (Plath, 1971) suggests a loss of control, overwhelming darkness, and powerlessness. The imagery of darkness seeping through unexpected cracks is a fitting metaphor for depression or suicidal ideation.
Abiku, don't worry, I am too indecisive to take my own life. It is madness that I always change my mind about things. It may seem insane that I want to explore every meaning of language, to bear every name that I haven't been given, because I can't be everything at once but per time. Today, I am grateful to be Dimgba, a man that wrestles, who contends for his peace, for his life, for sanity. What will I be tomorrow? What is it?
So I have chosen to tie together these words into a noose strong enough to kill me, although it cannot. It is simply suicidal ideation, one in which I can bleed out perfectly in my imagination through my writing wrists because only a madman will build the gallows for his own death through a letter, and I am.
In a way, writing these letters also feels like embracing a best friend who has been diagnosed with breast cancer. But even as you hold onto them, you know that the embrace cannot take away the inevitable fear of death hanging above both of you. Then the said best friend dies. And that was the last hug. Similarly, this writing becomes a way of clinging to an illusion of permanence, a fragile attempt to keep you close, to preserve the memory of your being, that we are still tethered to the same moment in time and space. But deep down, I know this is a lie that cannot undo the reality of your absence. My words can only echo in the empty space where you used to be. And all we have is this fleeting moment, this tender embrace, this fragile connection on ink that is both everything and nothing at all.
It’s been months since my last letter, and I have turned twenty-one. On my birthday, after my eight-hour work shift at the foundation, I went to church for prayers and bible study. This year, I did not post a picture, just like the previous year. There is nothing to celebrate. The night before, I had also worked an overtime shift and I got home past midnight.
“Today is my birthday,” I said in English to the security man as he opened the gate for me. I did not get a reply, and I brushed it off. Perhaps he does not understand or he pretends not to. Or he did not hear. Or it was too early to chat. Or too late? I don’t know. My online friends were unaware of my birthday, and yet I was telling this old man from the Niger Republic. On other days, we can communicate because I manage to scrape together some Hausa I have picked up over the years. What does a happy birthday mean in Hausa? Mai Sunan Ki? No, that means, what is your name?
Later that day, I received the sweetest birthday message, and it reads, “Happy birthday my love, it may not mean much to you now because a lot is going on but it's still the day you were born and that will always be a miracle.” That message was a reminder that people that know me personally love me. It was a different intimacy that did not need to be announced to be received. It felt special. I felt known. But to be seen so thoroughly comes with its cons. In a future letter, I might tell you why I do not want to be perceived as other than what I present. And somewhere in between I am living in cognitive dissonance.
When he locked the gate behind me, he offered me tea that tasted like lemongrass from his dirty-looking ceramic cup, which I believed must be clean. I drank it because I like tea and will never say no to tea. Any kind. Herb tea, cinnamon tea, cranberry tea, and ginger tea. I want them all. That midnight, I felt fearless even though he looked like an African Wizard of Oz, especially because he just looks like a wizard. And yet, I admire him because he doesn’t expect much from life. He is content with selling a few groceries by the gate during the day. He often reads a holy book and sits on his tiny Aladdin mat quietly, disturbing no one. Sometimes, I want to be him. But I am a deeply disturbed man; I am nothing like him.
Have you ever experienced the first smell of rain, just before it started pouring down? April is the month of the first rains, and it comes with that smell of dust, mud, or grass, which makes me feel nostalgic, relaxed, and full of memories.
Years ago, it was in the trapped and humid smell of April that my father drove my mother and me in his yellow mustard Mercedes Benz to the market. We went shopping for my birthday, and I remember we bought two large blue drums to ice the soft drinks and bottled water. These drums later served to collect water for years until we moved out of that flat. I also remember that particular birthday because it rained, and my favorite cousin refused to come upstairs to our flat. I remember feeling so sad. Later, she said it was because I didn’t invite her. Do you have to invite your second half to your celebration? It was the year I turned five and the last time I had a cake for my birthday.
During one of my uncle's numerous trips abroad, I remember he bought inflatable Spiderman souvenirs from South Africa. Among his children and my other cousins, I was thrilled to receive one - mine was the biggest, standing tall at four feet when blown. I became completely obsessed with it, spending hours playing and pretending with my new favorite toy.
However, one morning during prayer, I was playing with my Spiderman when my mother kept calling for my attention. Despite her warnings, I continued to play, until finally, she asked me to go and get the kitchen knife, threatening to stab my beloved Spiderman. I was filled with so much emotion and loss - I couldn't believe she would even suggest such a thing. But at her last warning, I went to get the knife.
In the kitchen, as I held the knife in my hand, tears streaming down my face, I couldn't believe what I was about to do. The Spiderman toy had become so important to me, almost like a friend, and the thought of losing it was unbearable. But at the same time, I felt like I had no control over the situation. My mother's threats to stab the toy because of my inattention during prayer made me feel powerless and scared.
When I returned, my mother watched with fear and surprise as I plunged the knife into my Spiderman. In quiet shock, she said her threat was to scare me into paying attention. In that moment, I was both defiant and defeated wanting to prove that I would not let her take away what was mine. But as I looked at the deflated remains of my Spider-Man, I realized that I had destroyed my own happiness at the altar of control. What then is self-betrayal?
Dear Silence, our love was exactly like the color nude. An open skin. It was precisely how I posed in front of you that hot afternoon in my room. I was exposed, revealed, and flash after flash, you took my pictures with your phone. It was your eyes that took me, that saw me, that snapped me not your phone because nothing inanimate can know me. In your presence, in the glory of my bareness, I was alive. You knew me just like silence knows every corner in an abandoned house. You came and filled me up, and there was no room for sound. This is how you became a name, a force, a regenerative silence.
Silence, I remember the time when I slept naked and woke up with your hand on my thighs. How horny I felt. How beautiful you looked, your face inches from mine. Your breath in my nose. I was breathing you. It was magic. We were magic.
Pollination is a regenerative process linked to migration. Through movement, seeds are carried by a mortal dying butterfly from flower to flower. Abiku, do you think genetics will internalize what was given in the place and time where we met, feather-to-mouth? Seed after seed through that season of lust, pounding hearts, love, hate, and perversion?
What does it mean to touch a beautiful butterfly even briefly? Elation! It leaves you with a feeling that you have encountered something rare. Then it flutters, out of reach, out of sight. Somewhere it will die an unceremonious life, but you saw it; it was alive, and you remember that day and how you felt. How I met you was a dying beautiful moment, dead from the very first day, and our time together - briefly gorgeous, shrunk in moments of fluttering memory. Conceivably, we were meant to end, but I tried to keep you entrapped in the palm of my hands. Am I a predator if I held on too long due to that first elation you gave me?
I knew you as a lover, by silence, as a butterfly, and as a passive aggressor. Do you remember how your silence was a knife that tore me open? How my need to control fate and my fear of losing you was the double-edged knife? Do you remember exactly how I plunged into you? Where exactly does it hurt?
It hurts in the places where I repeatedly hurt myself, where I kill my happiness. When I plunge into things or people I fear I will lose, Anaïs Nin puts it like this: 'You are still terribly afraid to be hurt; your imaginary sadism shows that. So afraid to be hurt that you want to take the lead and hurt first.’
The fluttering wings of a butterfly can carry more weight than one might imagine. They carry the potential for new life, for growth, for pollination. Just as a butterfly carries the seed, a dam in Cameroon carried the weight of ten years' worth of water. When that dam was released, it flooded our country, Nigeria. In this case, flooding, then, isn't a matter of nature, it is a matter of consequence. It is a reminder that our actions have far-reaching effects, and we must be mindful of the weight we carry.
This is what happens when guilt is too big for the body that holds it. When all we have is the loss of a loved one, the aftermath of a relationship. Memories, regrets, and the silence that catches in our throats when we say the name of our beloved. Guilt is nothing without the body it floods. It can be just as heavy as a dam full of water. And surely, It runs over. And we migrate through life with these burdens flying away and returning.
Recently, I started taking a one-hour walk home after work. It has now become a ritual for me; a time to disconnect from my screen and worries and to reconnect with myself and the world around me. During these walks, I find myself seeking solace in the quiet of the estate as the sun sinks slowly behind the horizon.
Yesterday, during my walk, I whispered an incantation to you through the wind as if it were a living thing that could carry my words to you. Hoping that my words would reach you wherever you were, I said, "Fly away, Rotimi. Fly away, Silence. Come back, Rotimi. Come back, Silence." Pausing for a moment to adjust the strap of my leather work bag on my shoulder, I continued, "Here, I name you Rotimi, just as Iyejide, the mother of the dead and the living in the book Stay With Me, names her Abiku daughter. Because Rotimi is an incantation. Because I want you to live, now that you are both alive and dead, free from me, your captor."
I closed my eyes, drawing up the image of your face as I called out softly to you, "Like a butterfly, like a bird, you are already gone. Migrating through life, moving forward in your journey of growth and healing." I opened my eyes, scanning the sky for a sign, any sign that my message had been received. Then I saw it. It was the full moon.
"What season is this? What changes and transitions are you experiencing?" I whispered to myself, hoping that each time you saw the moon in its fullness, you remembered how we sat under this same moon. How our love was too full that it overflowed in waves we were not equipped to hold. That you remembered the night you told me you loved me, and I watched you quietly. But my question lingered in the present like a prayer, a plea.
To be continued…
Sir Pappy’s Newsletter Original Art by Shalem Alone. All rights © reserved by Sir Pappy & Shalem Alone.
you’re an amazing writer🔥🔥
Sir, your writing pairs perfectly with a glass of wine and complete silence. It is so beautiful. Please never stop. x