Fiction by Nana Yaa Osei

Every day that I don’t write is laced with an echo of regret. It pains my children that I have not traced my emotions, ideas and thoughts down to them. They borrow and buy a means of transport through time and form themselves in a womb that has not yet known the warmth of their father’s hand. And as the events of my life transpire, I hear them whisper from within my being. They say, Mother! Here is a lesson that life has been gracious to teach you. Here is a moment that would have better connected you and me. Here is a feeling that we could have both shared. Mother write it down. I hear my children at night when the exhaustion of the day has numbed me. I hear their whispers when joy has ridden through every morsel of my being. I hear them in the morning when there is nothing but silence and thought. I hear them and I say, I’m going crazy. These are just thoughts in my mind, let life’s rush be the therapy that draws me into sane-ity. And one by one, I blew out the candles that fuelled their magic or science. I tucked them into a vacuum and told them  their mother is nothing and has nothing to give. I whisper back a recommendation of all the other better writers and artists and creators. I place an address in their hands and tell them that they can set off and find them, for they have come to the wrong house. I turn my muses into mistakes and send them away that they may find a home somewhere with someone else.

Today I learnt the bitter truth when a man, who once like me, had heard the call of his future disciples to write in the present. He had listened to their screaming and the obnoxiousness of their childhood. He had heard the whining of their toddler years, and now he was walking with beautifully growing daughters and sons of the future. how lucky he was, to have been ready to find   his children. I admired his work with a dash of envy.

He said to me that he had never found his children, but that they had found him. And when they came, he opened the door and fed them his heart.

Bio

Nana Yaa has been writing to navigate her thoughts since she learned that her logic and reasoning flowed through the ink of a pen and the tap on a keyboard. She has recently learned that an existence filled with contribution is better than one filled with doubt and so she is learning to no longer hold back, hoping to connect with others through words.