Kisses

Your tongue tastes like it was dipped several times into another woman’s loins, thrust against the walls of her insides, and moistened by the waters of an experience you created.

You bring that stale organ into my mouth, and your nervous breath pours hot air on my face. You don’t smile today; you keep a straight face with closed eyes and pretend to savour my lips.

When you held me by the waist in front of the church, did you think about a day like today? A day your tongue would wander into the nakedness of a stranger’s mouth? My mama was almost in our faces that day we chose to be married. She sat in the front pew with lips smeared in red stain. She bought the lipstick the afternoon you asked me to plunge my mouth around the bulge in your groin. She would later tell Mma Nnoso that I brought her the lipstick from Calabar, bought directly from the men in Tinapa who ship items from obodo oyibo.

Our first kiss wasn’t really our first kiss, but the church roared in excitement when Father Nduka announced that we join our lips in holy matrimony. My mama raised her saka-saka tambourine, waved it in the air, and triggered a noise that spurred the choir to release a song for our “first kiss.” Your hand on my waist, my lips buried in yours, our eyes shut, and for a moment it felt like we were alone, kissing in church. Your lips were like grapes, succulent with a refreshing fluid of sweet flavor. I drank draughts of your saliva and chewed on your tender lips until I heard my mama in my head scream a loud “Tufiakwa!”

Who is the other woman? Are her lips better?

I am too young to nurse the pain of betrayal, a tag that follows Ozubulu. I heard he was your kinsman; I heard his wife was his good luck charm. They said she hid her juju beneath her tongue and transferred it to him in a kiss when battles called. But what did your kinsman do? Just like you, he muddled his mouth between a woman’s thighs, carried his useless mouth without scrubbing off the spills, and chanted war songs after he conquered our enemy village. The village drunk said he kissed his wife that night with the same lips and was reduced to Ozua—the one who sings of his past glory.

Today, you bring me that stale tongue? I am not Ozubulu’s wife; I am Agatha. I sing church hymns in the choir and eat the holy communion with my tongue. I stay awake to pray for your business, and you bring back a mouth that has feasted on other women? Oga di.