Say What You Need To Say ~ by Kay

Say What You Need To Say
By Ugwuzor Kay

Is there anything you want to say
Before we look one last time to turn away?
Any thoughts you want to share
Perhaps some deed, to clear the air?

Could there be anything, hiding?
Underneath thin covers, residing?
Beyond this fence between us?
Too high to scale, too wide to cross?

There were emotions we so longed denied
They asked, we looked away, shy, sly and lied
Short moments when our eyes clicked
Our spirits lighted like a switch flicked

We have had wordless conversations
Tinged with quiet reservations
Misconstrued  arguments
And unspoken compliments

We have passed messages in secret
Describing feeling that were concrete
Were there letters that were never sent?
Give them to me now, for I it was meant?

It could be we won't meet again
Don't let these walls close and we remain
Strangled with feelings that never shone
And become hard like this wall, like this stone

If ever my words did turn you on
If my touch did ever make your insides burn
Tell me now before I turn
And like a ghoul, now here, now gone

©Kay Ugwuzor
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Maybe it’s just because I just finished reading Last Days At Forcadoos High School by A.H Emmanuel that these thoughts are coming to my mind but whatever the reason I am forced to remember the last days at MY school too (Nothing compared to Jimi’s but…) it was while I gathered these thoughts that I wrote the poem.
One can wait too long for something he is eager for and at the end, still lose it. There are always those last words said before a final good bye that I’ve always overlooked, those final thoughts that crossed my mind as something that needed to be said before I left a place that I’ve always denied voicing. It’s funny when I think about school now. I remember the girl I had a crush on since SS1 (don’t blame me too much anyway, she started it). I can vividly remember three moments with her that gave me a faint hope that there was something.
First there was the time in the hallway, during change of classes. If I recall correctly; she was returning from calling the next teacher and I was leaving to get something from the snack shop down stairs. We met at the hall and how awkward it was. What’s the point of saying ‘hi’ to a classmate you just saw in the class a few minutes ago I thought and so I walked on and maybe the same thoughts were going on in her head too, we didn’t greet or act like we knew each other and passed and it felt so strange to both of us that as soon as our shoulders had crossed we turned at the same time and our eyes met. It was like we touched even though we were a few feet away and laughed out loud at our awkwardness. We turned again at the same time and wordlessly left each other. ‘We have had wordless conversations’
A second time was during an examination. We were on break in between papers and she had asked me to teach her a topic in Math. She was very bright; almost as smart as I (I won’t give her all the credit because I’m still envious of her person) but when the topic was treated – Matrix – she had fallen ill and wasn’t in school (I was glad I was a smart one and I could teach her). So we sat at a desk, the chit and chatter of the other students flooded the hall, we sat at a far corner and I learned later that some other classmates had been watching us. I showed her how it was done, used examples and all. She claimed she understood and took the pen to do an exercise to prove it. I watched her hand as she wrote; those pointed fingers moved quickly and gracefully, her handwriting was the best to me. She wrote, pausing only to do a mental sum. It was like I was spellbound by her nimble working that I stared until she made a blunder on the sheet. 2 X 2 = 8?! For a while my eyes remained on the sheet, wondering, then I looked up and she was looking at me ‘Short moments when our eyes clicked’ (did I mention she had such beautiful eyes?) she looked like a toddler who wanted to know if she was right and I knew that she knew, no matter how many classes she hadn’t attended, that 2 X 2 wasn’t 8. I assume she had caught me gaping at the sheet and intentionally written the blunder to reawaken me and we burst out laughing. I just remember her eyes and the way they glowed plea fully like they suggested that whatever I teach her was what she would know, what she would choose to know.
The third time was during the graduation ceremony, the very last day. It was the day those words I had been meaning to say long ago came prodding at my lips. She being she always looked incredibly beautiful in whatever she wore, all she needed was to hang on that sly smile and that day she looked amazing. But it was on that day that I decided that; close as we were, she was too much for me to have (this feeling has gone now, I was young and immature then). She was like delicate glass; I imagined that if I ever took her between my frail fingers I might let her slip and she’d break. She was like a precious portrait and I didn’t want to smudge her with myself. Me, as low as I felt then, with her? Impossible! I tried to sneak away from the event, like I seem to have tried to do at every other event in my school life, my house was close, I could just walk but at the gate, another classmate saw me and requested that we take a picture. But it wasn’t because I didn’t like taking as much as a selfie of myself that made me uncomfortable; it was because he had brought her to take the picture too. So there we stood, the cameraman propped his camera, stooping bending and adjusting. Students carried on noisily, some casting glances at us (which makes me feel silly for standing there waiting for the guy to take the picture). The other boy then asked me to put my hand over her, she didn’t know, we were tall and so could argue over her head (literally). In the mind of my classmates, she was mine. Yet I was too timid to claim anything and I left my hands pressed by my side and he, being wiser, threw his hand across her neck while I watched. The camera flashed and the moment was captured for life, the moment when I had allowed someone else to take my prize. I paid the man and without saying goodbye to any classmate, I left.
I read somewhere that ninety or eighty percent of guys want the girl to make the first move and most times these guys lose their chances (story of my life). I’m trying to cross to the side of the other ten or twenty percent, not because of a girl anyway but still I need to learn how to express those things that linger in moments that I share with anyone.

~(c) Kay Ugwuzor

#For_The_One_I've_Always_Seen_But_Never_Met
#Poetry+Prose
Say What You Need To Say