A Dance

Anonymous

I repeatedly turned on the sides of my body pulling the duvet to my chest region to veil my naked self as though I had never loved to sleep bare.

The night was cold. It pierced into my skin and straight to my bones that I felt stiff from the cold. Its coolness gave a Canadian feeling in Lagos but for snow.

I had earlier fed my eyes with the beauty of the night through my window. I enjoyed the coolness of the air gluing tightly to my skin, leaving no part unfrozen. I began imagining the taste of a non-fictional overwhelming joy if I had an experience of snowfall at dusk in a bright land. There is a feeling accompanied by light. It brightens not the surroundings alone but gives internal happiness one can not phantom. I could see it from the height of the building through my window from where I stood in gaze. Well, welcome to a country where sweat and blood are a guarantee to power and the media, our happiness. I sighed thoughtfully while I fed my bright eyes with the beauty of the night and nature.

I laid on my back resting my hand behind my head as I stared in thought at the ceiling. I couldn't point a finger to what exactly had clouded my mind but I was certain life necessity was a host. My mind eye, however, got disconnected at the ding of my phone.

"Mtn, it is too early," I muttered, reluctant to reach for my phone lying on the top of the drawer adjacent to the bed.

I dragged lazily on the bed to reach a stretch to the drawer. I picked up my phone, double tapped to turn on the screen. The light from the screen was dim but bright enough to catch a glimpse, then a deliberate gaze on a notification that read, 'sweet dreams' with a red heart sticker.

Never was I this curious in years after my last failed relationship with Bryan.

I eagerly imputed my security code and had my hand run quickly to my message box to see for a fact that I wasn't delusional. I tapped to open the message. I wasn't delusional after all; it was real. I raised my eyes to the sender's ID and realized it was an anonymous message. I giggled frailly.

"Do you ever rest, Naomi?" I said rhetorically with the assumption it was my goatee technician of a sister as always. She was a pest to my existence. However, it'd been the reason I smiled more often having experienced a fire on fire past; a tearful situationship of relationships.

I glanced again at the message but now, intently, when an 'A' with a tilde sign at the right end of the message caught my gaze: An inclusion I had earlier not noticed.

I replaced my phone on the drawer's top with a hand gripped to the duvet. I turned on my side, pulled the duvet up my shoulder, and shut my eyes so tightly that the sides wrinkled. I needed some sleep. It amazed me how I had been awake from the late hours of the previous night to the early hours of the next day, wallowing in thought robbing three extra hours to a maximum of seven hours of proper rest. I would have gained much more weight if I had slept instead. I thought to myself.

I jerked my sleepy leg at the sound of the doorbell. I wasn't sure whose door it was that rang. Not that I cared anyway. All I was concerned about was the restoration of my sleep; time wasted. My bones were broken as though I was beaten to a pulp with slanted, but thick plywood.

With both hands, I covered my ears at the incessant ding of the doorbell. I had no doubt it was mine that rang, not my party freak of a neighbor who had a thing to celebrate every day that passed with his lousy invites troubling my private moments and the tranquility of the neighborhood with door bangs and deafening cheers from the feeling of the jam.

My hands alone couldn't do the trick to stop the sound from leaving rent-free in my ears so I buried my face in the bed, used a pillow to press harder then released a frustrated groan and a muffled shout.