I feel like my brain is rotting, the smell can be an unnoticeable one if I try hard enough to hide it. So I burn my incense sticks and rub my perfume oil with as much fervent devotion as the rubbing of hands in prayer. the intention, to keep its decay at bay. It works, usually. I can easily deceive people into thinking it’s the trash of Lagos or the distant smell of a dead rat. I will scrunch up my nose and ask along with the crowd “what's that smell?” So they don't know it's me, so I don't scare them away.

I sometimes try to fool myself too, I pretend that my brain is not eating at itself, I've been pretending for the past 20 years of my existence. It is what has kept me alive this far. As I grow older it is harder to lie to myself, I smell it overpowering my incense sticks, I catch the dead smell in the air mixing with the aroma of the pasta I made, I smell it even after layering heavy amounts of my mousuf. It will kill me, this brain of mine. It is already killing me, I don't want to live like this and I don't know if pretending as an act of preservation is serving its purpose anymore.

I feel so sorry for myself, I can't stand the smell and what it makes me do to quell it, the dead thoughts it forces into my conscience, the hideous thing all of this is, it eats at me alive and I chase salvation in the voice of my ancestors, the warmth of a woman’s touch, the high of weed. Nothing is ever enough to save me, to save me from myself. I wonder how long it’ll take before my flesh hollows out in exhaustion, a vessel feasting on itself.

For now, I am nowhere and everywhere, I am intentional with the writings of my existence and what I want it to say, I am happy when my mind allows me too, sponging up the joys so they serve as balms to my wounded soul and water to my dried lips. I dance when my body allows me to, twirling harder than any other, chasing the lightness that comes with such reckless abandon. I do this so when I am gone, they will think of me and say “Oh, she was a mad woman, but she loved very much and fought very hard”

I also got a piercing today it suits me very well and I'm probably just better on my own. I don't think I'm easy to be loved on a romantic level, I think I'm pretending to like it, I think they’re pretending to like me. I don't even know if I truly want this, I’m having cereal for dinner and it reminds me of the little girl I knew years ago. I’ll write to you again.