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  • Writer's pictureCynthia Asumpta Ouma

For the Baby

Updated: Apr 11, 2021


Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.’ She says these words for the umpteenth time. In that moment, that flash of anger protects her from the pain that had paralyzed her soul a few moments earlier. Her mother always lectured her on men and regrets. According to her, they always existed, hand in hand, where there was a man there had to be regrets. She always termed regrets as ‘moral residues’. Like something hard to remove which got stuck on you when you did an action against your better judgement. This to her seemed like that residue, impossible to remove, like an undeniable stain on a cerebral cortex. But right now she was about done with regretting and feeling low. She was burying every feeling she had including the ‘intimate’ ones that they had shared.

Diana burns the last of her stuff that he had bought. This way, she didn’t need to be reminded of him once she started moving on. She wipes tears from her face, ascends from the ground and sniffs. There is a slight bruise on her left knee, she hadn’t even realized it. This was just a little compensation for the hours she had subjected her knees to marrying with the stone pebbles, burning those gifts one by one and slowly chanting to herself the words…ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

She loved him…kinda. I think what her brain was trying to spit up was…she loved him if he were kinder. It was just that when it came to their emotional bank account, he took far more than he gave. She was okay with giving, but as time went by he became so entitled to it and in the process, he became her relationship sucking vampire. He seemed to always have something going on, his brother was a drunkard, his mum suicidal, his baby mama drama was the biggest issue of all and this is the issue that brought Diana to her knees begging for the love and affection of a man that seemingly wasn’t hers.

He had a son, but a son never came without a mother. He had pretended to be sincere from the very first day. Telling her about his son and how much he adored him. He had mentioned that he had a baby mama but they had no intimate relationship. ‘We see each other because of the baby, I don’t want my baby to grow up without his father’s presence,’ he always said whenever Diana tried to bring the subject of his baby mama visiting him, each weekend and spending the nights at his place. He said nothing happened whenever she visited, they would sleep in different rooms according to him. All this was always for the baby.

During this time, Diana was engulfed in all those feelings. I mean she was supposed to be an understanding girlfriend. If he wasn’t getting peace from the mother of his son, then she would be his peace of mind. She never needed his money, she had hers and all she wanted was his attention which she barely got. She chose to be lied to everyday, and with time she started creating excuses for him such that she ran out of the excuses and started being creative as to why he would act in some ways. ‘He didn’t pick my call so maybe he was busy; he doesn’t want me to reach out to him in the weekend, maybe he wanted to give his son all the attention; he hasn’t called for one week maybe he is solving a family issue.’ The maybes just became too much and with each stride and each lie that he told, her mind became more clear, more resolute, as if the growing physical distance between them had become an emotional crack.

She did what every other woman being played does, she decided to go through his phone when he had those drinking sessions where he got drank in the bar with his friends and came to her place, wanting and needing her. She knew she was being used for sex and willingly obliged. When he was satisfied and snoring, she unlocked his phone and went through his chats with the so called ‘baby mama.’ She wasn’t shocked but her worst fears were confirmed. This wasn’t a baby mama but his wife who lived out of town and constantly visited in the weekend. She was heartbroken, cried in the bathroom for all the hours he was asleep, swore that this was the last time he would see him. She wasn’t going to be the ‘other woman’ and she would never be.

He had woken up in the morning of Saturday, reminding her that she shouldn’t reach out, his son would be around. She smiled at him, kissed him and hugged him…, ‘Have a beautiful weekend darling, I will miss you. Bye.’ That was sure going to be the last time she becomes an object of sexual satisfaction and she bid goodbye to all the trash he had brought with him and it brought her to this moment, where she was erasing every memory of him.

‘Even I know I deserve better…’ she says as she dusts her knees and enters her apartment. Good riddance!!

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