NOTHING.

I looked at your picture today and I felt nothing.
No acid rain rushing up from my belly tight with churned butterflies into my throat, no heat ripples clasping tight around my joints and edges, no prickly pairs standing on end at the tips of my hairs, no creepy crawlies walking around lazily, mercilessly beneath my epidermis, Nothing.

I know this because I waited,
I deliberately sought out your profile picture from where it consistently changed at the bottom list of my blocked contacts on WhatsApp.

I wanted to know how my immediate insides would feel seeing your lifeless smile, smirk, frown or feigned absent mindedness in that little square.
So as I picked up my phone, heart still racing, I was shocked when my heart stopped and in all honesty, before God and man I felt Nothing.

You see, it had nothing to do with strength, akpor, ginger or will. I hadn't made any resolutions seasoned with 'girl power' to forget you lately. My mind was not on a rampage to find peace from spoiling myself silly, savouring vacations that tasted of sugary cakes, leaving my pocket sore, only to return home to the places I wept, the places I slept, the places that did me 'yimu' because they knew me long before I packed my bag and left. Yea, i gave it thought, so I did not go, because leaving home meant carrying the very environment I wanted a break from with me and that didn't even make any sense! So from the very beginning I chose to let go of my assumptions that a human being could ever belong to me.

But seriously, it pained me.

Because no matter what, the heart has a way of becoming home and when someone moves in its like roots begin to grow on floors and walls, and flowers bloom from buds and its hard to ignore the one that uses your blood as soil, the one you become fond of. He grows on you.

So I cannot deny that when you walked away even though it wasn't literal, because walking is something you do to move around but somehow your branches stretched far out  toward a different side and I struggled as the strain of your deep set roots pulling out of my heart daily,  left me leaking on many sides, I thought I would die, again not literally, but inside.

So when time passed and I scrolled down to your profile just to look at your picture, I was thrilled!
Because not only did I feel nothing, my heart had healed and as the dull edges of my lips cracked into a smile, I realised that I was actually happy to see you after such a long time.