all the things i have lost here cannot be found

i still try though

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When I was five, I learned about Jesus and his love for his lost straggling sheep. This was also when I grew a penchant for looking for lost things. 

I have learned two very important lessons about lost things: One, from every maniacal search, you either find the lost thing or lose it further. Two, all lost things have these three things in common: they were once here, once known, and once felt. 

My Papa was once here in this ordinary-looking house we call home. He always sat on the aga, the cream three-seater sofa, where I sometimes measured my height. Currently, my length was inching towards the other end of the armrest and in no time will dangle over it. 

Papa always had the radio on. It stood beside the aquarium buzzing the same station daily and it would croon all sorts of noise and news. Because Papa had it on all the time, I sang along with the adverts, knew what programs were on and scheduled for when. I was a part of the radio station just as Papa was. 

Papa was always known. For who does not know their father, except there are wounds of pain where supple flesh should blanket? Everyone said I called Papa before I had my first eyin, my genesis tooth. Later, I would don Papa’s suit, booming with false authority as I ordered my older siblings to wash ‘my car’, polish ‘my office shoes’, scratch my back. Like Papa I will laugh, cackling like his radio when it loses signal.

Papa was always felt. At irole, when God doodles his orange paint on the sky, I would massage his bald head while cosplaying as an expert braider. I would tell him to arrange his head, and keep still as I’m already working my way through the last rows of his ‘hair’. On some days, I’d let my hand trace his bulging stomach, circling the rotund flesh as if looking for an opening to let the swell out. All the dead fufu, amala and Semo finally receiving their transfiguration. I’d softly smack his stomach like I always see him do after a heavy meal. I felt Papa. 

If my heart was water, then my love for Papa was hydrogen. If I scraped my knee, I called on him. If I topped the class, I did it for him. Papa was my A, Papa was my Z, Papa was my l, m, and n.

But now he is lost and I have to find him.

The aga is empty, the radio is silent. There is no bulging stomach to be felt, no hydrogen, no alphabets. There are only runny noses, the sunken eyes of siblings, the bitter silence of my mother, and my frantic hands as I search for my lost father in this freshly dug soil. 

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This is my first story on Substack and hopefully the first of many. I never thought it’d make it here cos’ the perfectionist in me demanded more from the story while the procrastinator left it to marinate in drafts. But it’s out now and I hope you had a good read. <3