Our Unknown Friend

Unhappy girl with mother and new baby in background — Image by © Justin Paget/Corbis

Jealousy sounds like an unfamiliar word.
Like an enemy that we do not know about.
Or a friend that never visit.

We just become really stupid not realising that she is as close as our breath
She sleeps in the same house with us
She laughs with us
She watches us grow and just knows the right time to attack.
Because she knows everything about us…

She reminds us subtly of the shoes we do not have that a friend just got
Of the life we pray for daily that our neighbour next door lives without stress
Of what we really need that a sibling gets effortlessly. .
Of how good things keep happening to bad people who never reach us that stay good,
Or at least,  not yet.

She talks more than our so-called best friends do.

If only we knew.

The babe is so smart,
She lives in our mind.
She plants hatred,
She plants disgust,
And stays there quietly.
Watering the seeds,
Carefully nurturing them.
Till they become giant stems, and branches
That cannot be easily uprooted.
They take spot in our hearts, brains and veins.

How do you want to uproot them?

Written

by

Ifeyinwa Amagwula

Read her other posts here