Letter to Pius: You are not a dead man

BY ADEDOKUN SEYI

You don’t know me. I am sorry for introducing myself after sitting at your table, eating all your beverages and wallowing in your bathroom basin of lots of soupy dishes. I have made it a responsible for myself to pay you the truest respect, which won’t even be the last. I have said, even in the grave, you remain forever. For now, till after a year, I am still seeing a mirage of the news that you’ve gone to prepare a final place, where your wealth of knowledge would be dished out to us like a sandwiched crayfish. I am still in the dream that you only had a mere leg dash and it’s healed already. That you’re gone would only be the bad news that summarizes the world.

On March 9, I was at Iseyin, imagining what you would say if you were there. From Iseyin to Iwajowa, there are large expanse of land, even to Itesiwaju, natural resources must have hidden in some of the soil areas, but nobody could even come to dig deeper into these riches. But over there, they dig deeper into how to make people run mad or die. On a street, I’ve seen people, they appeared normal, but talked to the other side of the world. If you were there, maybe we would have more of the artistic rendition to these places.

While we bounced into March, nobody was in my gravy heart. Before kissing the rain of 2019, I never wished to hear anyone dead, but early in the morning, while I was reading for my examination, at the corner of the most prestigious library, I felt the incompleteness. It appeared like something was lost. I checked the shelves in the library, not because I needed a book, but I noticed that some books – which I didn’t have an idea of what their back covers look like – were supposed to be on those shelves. Secondly, some imaginary books got lost, and I searched within, to see them at the corner of my undergraduate, all I could see was darkness, clobbered around, satiently telling me that it was a dead light, whispering to me to follow the shadow, and there stood a man, in his tucked shirt with tuxedo, and a brown golden shoe that no Nazarene had, writing on the wall of memory, and leaving the chalk with its particle standing still on the space.

Until I heard, “I have completed my work”, then I checked where I’ve fallen from this fifth floor of dreams, and sound of sonorous songs, ganging up to draw these books to their solace. What for? He’s gone. What? Pius. Which Pius? Check your phone? A bit of tears didn’t drop from this deserted eyes, but I fell, I fell, I fell into fate – a fate of losing the great “books” the world is building. A book that awaits to have thousands of pages in our carved heart. The books that contain only one name, that we admire and cannot do without reading a sentencr of his. They told me you’re gone.

Even though you don’t know me, but I’d promised to meet you one day. To meet you at the most beautiful solace, where to dish us your mind and greet us with hope us being fine. Right at your table, some foods are still lying uncooked. If we can bring them over, I don’t think it’s a crime. I am sorry, what you left behind are enough, we don’t have such currency to cross boarder as you boldly did in a twinkle. We were not paying attention when you told us that the son of man would be caught up anytime. We procrastinated on asking what the color of death is. We wanted to ask why death take the good ones and leave the bad to pay them “last” respect.

You left without a good bye. You left without giving us your good tears. You left with the stones hardened on the ground, terrifying us, and telling us that the day is near.

Wherever you are: from Nigeria, to Ghana, to America, to Canada and taken up on your way to Ethiopia by the chariot of fire, ministered to after a faint from ministration, we know you’re not dead. We are on a journey, to get those books back, sit them in the old library, to make it new. Even this cup is old, your wine will freshen it. You’re a drop that fills the heart, a dew that greens the leaves, and lastly, a cracked wall that is saving us from the rushing wind of ignorance. You live forever, yes, you live and you’re just on a journey.