Everybody pretends to be different, shoulders held high, claiming they’re nothing alike with another. And it makes sense, human beings need to feel different in order to feel human. But not you. You are different, standing in this room full of pretentious strangers, dancing alone because you choose to, in that red dress that no human can pull off. And there is that glow about you, the way that the light meets your skin but glitters instead. Yet I feel too scared to approach, too scared to interfere in this cosmic miracle that your presence is. I need you to know though that in the lives before this, I did. In the life before this, I bumped into you and spilled my drink all over your red dress. And in the life before that, you saved me from a snake’s sting. Before that, it was at the monastery, and the things your fingers did to me… And before that, you were a red-breasted bird and I, I was the branch you loved to perch on. All this to say that I know you, in every life. In a world where knowing everything precisely is impossible, this -that you will always be for me- is certain. And that is all that I need, all that it takes, to get me up on my feet and ask you to have a dance with me.

But you say no, you grab the woman dancing next to you, and you kiss her.

In none of the lives we have lived has this ever happened. The gods never promised this, never said that our lives together had an expiration date. Watching you with this woman, wondering how I haven’t noticed her since I’ve been in this room with you, makes me want to empty all that is inside of me on this dance-floor. This is not what Chukwu promised me, us, and it is not the oath that Ala and the god of love swore in our presence at the very beginning of time. And I am angry, enough to invoke the powers that were bestowed on me, to end this world and start it all over with you. But this went wrong without your knowledge too, otherwise you would be dancing with me and we would be getting ready for the end, for the start of another life.

Except Chukwu says you know about this, and Ala says you asked for it. And I am left standing at the crossroads of my memories with you, fiddling with the wave-lengths of them, trying to understand where it all went wrong, when we stopped being meant for each other.

Maybe it began at the carousel in the mainland -remember the one our friend introduced us to somewhere in Ikoyi- where you broke up with me for the first time in that life. I still have no clue why you’d initiated the breakup but since we got back together, it must not have been in that timeline. So maybe it began after that, at the cinema with the really loud baby -maybe you still think babies are a nuisance and you’re scared I’m going to persuade you to have one. Or maybe it began before that, before the carousel, but I am tired of playing these tricks with my brain, this endless game of Guess-The-Time. I need to find you, and I need to look you in the face when you tell me why.

You live in Enugu now, somewhere in Independence Layout. Your woman opens the door when I ring the doorbell and she tells me, in a way that I think is condescending, to sit on the bench in the verandah while she goes inside to get you. There are dogs in your yard, you’ve always hated dogs but it looks like you own a few now. And there is a child, but I am choosing to do my heart a favour by not breaking it any further with the idea that you like kids now too.

“Ekene,” I hear you call, and I know you are standing by the door. I don’t know why but I begin to sob, and you place your hand on my shoulder and wait for me to be done. I’ve come here with so many questions but when I blow my nose into the napkin you’ve handed me, and I look in your face, all I can blurt is “Why?”

“It has nothing to do with you, Ekene”

“But it does though,” I say, wondering how you cannot see it, if you are choosing to not see it. “It has everything to do with me. Anuli, this isn’t the life we were meant to live”

“My name isn’t Anuli anymore”

“What?”

“Not in this timeline and not in any other. I get to pick my own names now”

I wonder, even more, if you can see the confusion on my face -you’ve always told me how I am incapable of separating my feelings from my facial expressions.

“I also get to choose my other lives now”

“You have always had that choice,” I remind you.

“But not with you Ekene. My lives with you have never been a choice. Chukwu made me for you, don’t forget that.” And after a moment, you say “I’ve always felt like something made for your amusement”

“But you are not,” I cry, because this is harder than I’d anticipated it to be.

“I am though. Or, I used to be. And I talked to you about this but you disregarded me, as always”

“I never disregard you!”

“Well, would you like to talk about the cinema? I told you that I’d like to grow up as a kid in one of our lives, and you trivialized that!”

“No I didn’t. I said it was mundane to want to be a kid”

“There! And at the carousel, you proposed and I said no, and you almost rewound time because you couldn’t stand not having things go your way for once!”

“But we are always meant to be though!”

“Exactly Ekene. My life has always been yours and never mine. I was made for you.”

I have nothing to say to this. I guess I am starting to see it now.

“So your choice did have everything to do with me,” I whisper. You hear me but you say nothing. The clouds are beginning to thicken now, grey-ish blues clustering. That is when I ask your name.

“Kambili,” you say, and I wonder if it is also a warning plea to me, to let you live as you please. The rains begin to drizzle and you beckon on the kid to get inside the house but he says no and begins to spin in circles, and I see a reflection of you in him.

“We adopted him,” you start to say. “Not officially, of course. His parents died in a car crash and Nnedi, my partner, was registered as the next-of-kin. So we took him in.” A pause. “He calls me aunty. I want him to call me mum, the way he calls Nnedi, but I can’t force it on him. I’m only a guardian”

I feel sad for you.

“You could have chosen this life in a different time…”

“I know,” you say. “But I fell in love with a woman from this time.”

When the rain starts to pour, you run to bring the child in. He is laughing and so are you, and it makes me a little envious.

“I should see what living without you is like,” I say when you get back from drying him up and putting him to sleep. I see a smile creep into your face.

“You should do that,” you encourage. I feel myself about to sob again.

“You know one thing I’ve always loved about you?” you ask and I say no. “It’s how you wear your emotions on your face”

The tear drops now and I realize the rain might be my fault. You laugh because you agree, and we laugh even more for reasons I do not know.