I was drowned in a pool of words that Dikachi had put together to make sentences that grew and extended their tentacles to every part of her page; pages multiplied until they became a beautiful story. She wrote and I read. I was the only one permitted to read her works. That made me feel special.

I preferred reading novels under the ebelebo tree (almond fruit tree). That was what my Benin friends called it. Since I wasn't Benin but Igbo, I pronounced the word as ebele bo, which if translated in Igbo language would mean "mercy bo." I preferred to sit there and perhaps it was because the nerd boy also sat there.

He wasn't just a nerd, he was handsome in an unusual way; he wasn't bald like my step father. Thin lines of hair ran from his chin up to the top side of his face. The remaining hairs that God let him have were sprinkled above his top lips, his long legs and arms. His eyeballs were mystical, I always believed there were pages of stories living in them. It would be delightful to read them over and over again. If his eyes were filled with typed stories, I would want them carefully printed through his red shade lips, and a taste of his lips... what was I thinking?

His eyes always met mine but he constantly looked away into a huge textbook, supposedly a biology textbook.

One day, I decided to do what the youths would call 'shooting shots.' I sat close to him and I felt I was floating through existence.

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https://www.thezenpens.com/2019/09/29/the-way-i-feel/