Perfectly Imperfect

86

KUNMI

I kept counting backwards from 100 to 1 and I kept going back whenever I missed a number.

It was supposed to help me focus.

To keep me rooted in the presence.

But it wasn't working, it wasn't working at all.

My thoughts wouldn't stop overflowing, the repressed memories wouldn't stop resurfacing.

It's been 48 hours, 48 hours of pure and absolute horror, 48 hours of total sadness, 48 hours when I couldn't bear to comprehend anything that was happening.

Everything had happened so fast, so fast it was unreal, so fast it was unbelievable.

One minute, Aminah was opening her eyes and holding my hands and the next, she was been wheeled out of the room, been wheeled away to be buried.

To be buried.

She was to be buried.

I inhaled a pin, that was how hard it was and how much it hurts to breath.

She was dead. They had proclaimed her dead. A 17 year old girl who should have a shinning future in front her.

A 17 year old...

She was young, that young, very young and yet, she died... She was dead.

Just like that.

Aminah was dead. Aminah Abraham was dead.

Aminah was dead.

She was really dead.

I needed someone. I desperately needed someone to wake me up from this horrible nightmare.

I needed to wake up to see Aminah's smiling face, her ever smiling face, so I could feel her contagious energy, her ever vibrant energy, her jumpy attitude.

But that wasn't possible, it wasn't possible again because she had been forcefully snatched away from us.

Because she was gone forever.

Gone forever.

At that very tender age.

We'd never... I'd never see Aminah again.

From deep within me, something screamed, manically, a gut wrenching scream that shattered my eardrums. A scream that sounded so painful to be human, that sounded so painful to be mine.

The door burst open and Mayowa and Mom entered in a tow.

"Oluwabukunmi, are you okay? Ehn? Talk to me, Oko mi. You've been scaring me with the way you've been acting for the past two days. Ehn?" Mom was lamenting, almost tearfully but I wasn't paying attention to her.

I couldn't pay attention to her.

There was that silence in my head, in my eyes, that silence when the machine had stopped beeping, when her hand had fell away from mine, when there had been no holding back from her hand.