UYAI ✔️

Uyai (eight)

I love you...

I love you...

Those words kept resonating. It was so loud he wished his auricles didn't pick up the sound waves and localize it.

It hurt his ear drum, his auditory tube couldn't equalize the pressure.

Those words, so beautiful, meant to uplift the heart. It tore at him from the inside and left him vulnerable instead.

Those beautiful yet deadly words bore a hole in his heart.

He held his chest and squeezed the skin as if to pull out the throbbing heart. It constricted painfully; the pain unbearable.

The pain of a broken heart.

He choked a cry.

He didn't understand.

He couldn't understand how just yesterday when he had finally decided he'll pursue her; now here she stood in the arms of his rival already confessing her love.

It broke him.

The wells in his eyes broke loose. A tear escaped.

Then another.

More fell.

He was crying; and over a woman who had never even glimpsed his face. He felt embarrassed that a woman could hurt him so and she didn't even have a clue.

He cursed himself.

He cursed Edem.

Still, he felt no satisfaction. He felt defeated when the battle had only begun; he was just starting to make use of his instrument of warfare, instead he was apprehended from behind and struck down.

Damn love!

Damn these fire woods! he kicked a log ignoring the throbbing sensation it brought to his toes.

Damn Uyai for raising his hope; for making him believe he had a chance. Damn those city books he had read.

Damn...

"My daughter is sure to get a proposal come next year." a lady spoke as two middle aged women appeared with matted baskets containing their harvest. He recognised the woman who spoke.

It was her mother.

The mother of the one he had vowed to woo. The one who was now in the arms of another man.

"What if it doesn't come? And if it does come, but its from Etai Nyang, the neighbouring village, would you be willing to give out your daughter?" Effiong paused and his ears perked up when he heard the other woman speak. He looked to the direction Affiong and Edem was to view their reactions; if they had heard the question asked. He couldn't deny that he was also curious to hear her mother's reply.

But when he looked, he found the spot empty; devoid of the two who just few minutes ago where locked in an embrace. Effiong felt the familiar thud in his chest as he recalled the scene he had witness; the women now forgotten as the scene repeatedly replayed in his head.

"...course! If he's won the price of the highest and biggest yam harvester, then why not?" The voice was coming closer, and it drew him out of his reverie. He quickly gathered his thought and looked at the firewood that had fallen off his hands. He started picking up the logs in a hurry, but thought back on it as they appeared closer. He knew he had to leave immediately, so he threw them back on the ground and hurriedly ran into a mini bush and hid himself.

"You mean like Mfon?"

"Yes."

"Really? You have no qualms of giving your daughter out like that even if its to a man like that fellow that won the last one?"