‘You can talk,’ you retaliated. ‘You’re as rootsy

as the driven snow.’ You rolled onto me, into me,

my anger drifted downriver like a log.

You loved your skin, polished with cocoa butter,

advised I do the same or I’d ‘flake to dust like a relief

on an Egyptian tomb’. You’d coo over my complexion.

‘Do you like me or my light-skinned factor?’ I said.

‘Both, and at least I’m honest before you throw one.

You know I suggest you pursue an academic career.

Paint as a hobby. You have a trunk-full of O’s and A’s.

I only ever had three choices: law, medicine, finance.

Well, you know how we Nigerians are.’ ‘Yes’, I lied,

then flared up, ‘So why are you trying to change me?’

‘Because I want to lick your chocolate button nippies.’

You twirled and stroked yourself. I laughed, coalesced.

But felt my summer of passion waning.

‘YOU’LL NOT marry a Nigerian if you can’t obey me.’

I shook my head slowly. ‘You are such a wanker.’

‘Ditto, Lara, ditto.’ I flung my head back. ‘Marriage?

I love the F-word too much, you know…freedom.’

‘Just as well, because you don’t even know what

Jollof rice is, let alone how to cook it. You’re strictly

a fish fingers and mash girl. You’ll make a sorry wife.’

He sniffed, smugly sipped his drink, crossed his legs.

‘Why don’t you put me down, Bertie Wooster,

and who says I only like Nigerian men?’

‘It’s obvious, you hope some of it will rub off on you.’

‘Oh fuck-off, you idiot! Tampon-dick!’

Then he melted, vulnerable in his contrived pose,

the sweet Josh, two years old and thumb-sucking.

I softened, ‘Sorry, Josh. Cuddle?’ / ‘Yes’, he pouted,

‘A treatie for Wole the Wonder will do the trick.’

I crawled towards him, took his pitiful dejection

in my mouth, chomped, left a shiny, oozing Bounty Bar.

Such a failsafe method of resuscitation.

LAUTREC posters, blue lamps, Portobello pub,

candle-wax bubbles over baroque holders, hedgehog

barmaids have stapled noses, safety-pinned flesh.

I hover in a dungeon alcove, nurse my port, insecure,

wish I’d been born a Holland Park babe, was a funky

half-caste darling, a Cleo Laine jazztress with a voice

that soars, seducing the crowd. My kohl-eyed cohorts

from art school – Hampstead, Chelsea and Fulham,

have tunnelled blow up their nostrils. ‘Is that not your Josh?’

Jemima exclaims, glimmering. Hickory, dickory, dock.

Stop. Time clocks. Incongruous in blazer and loafers,

he confidently guides a young Shirley Bassey in sassy

zippy leather to the bar, all kissy-kissy, gooey-gooey, yuk!

I kamikaze my port, emerge bloodened, dazed,

confront him outside. O, to serrate beer bottles.

Scarify his cologned cheeks. Kung Fu his dim sums.

‘You like the F-word, remember? We’re not wed, Lara.’

My alphabet tumbles, jumbles into a three-year-old’s bawl.

‘You…you…’ I barely whimper, a dissolving aspirin.

Verbals! I need verbals! Please, I want my verbals!