It was our only skin to skin contact

Quick and fast but enough to feel each other’s presence while hiding

Our yearning

Our desire

From the world

For it was forbidden

They rented a high rise apartment in Ikoyi for the weekend.

She got up from the bed around 8am on Saturday in her blue and white striped pajamas. She strolled down the stairs while rubbing her eyes and there it was

A beautifully decorated American breakfast, a fresh steam from the waffles with a bottle of syrup beside it and a nice glass of apple juice.
She looked towards the balcony where the curtain in front of the entrance captured the rays of the sun nicely and a soft breeze blew it and that’s when she saw it; A Canvas mounted on an easel with paint, paint brushes and a palette on the stool beside it.

She gasped silently and then his voice “ you haven’t painted in a while, we have to bring that back but definitely not on an empty stomach”

With shock plastered on her face she also had the widest smile on her face because how did he know she has been thinking of being creative again.

“When did you get up to do this?” “Where did you get the easel from?” “We just got in yesterday?”. As the questions rushed from her mouth so did a few drops of tears and all these happened while she was still on the stairs.

He looked at her with admiration like he would do anything to have that smile on her face and that meant he had to keep shocking her like he did today.

He saw her and he knew her.

They had breakfast then she walked to the balcony to paint but unknown to her there were other items; a book, a journal and her laptop (which she left downstairs the night before) .

“I know how you like switch hobbies in between, just incase you get bored of the other, so i put all the things you need

A journal if you want to write

A book if you want to read

And your laptop in case you want to watch a movie, you can see it’s your personal laptop because i know you will start saying you want to work small”.

She turned around and jumped on him, she smelled like cocoa butter, definitely from her shower gel and he loved to inhale her scent.

He let her be but told her they had dinner reservations at 8pm.

That day her love for art was renewed.

But I got storms as your reply

To see if I’d always choose you

Because you have a creative way of handing blessings

So I guess these storms means I’m getting closer

But I’ve never held one that’s fully mine

Their hands always slipped, always became rough, always bruised.

I wear my gloves to hold my hand

To fill up the space

To keep them warm

To keep them from being held

-O.V

Sometimes I stop myself from dreaming because the world seems so real, so logical.

Sometimes dreams hurt too, they scratch the walls of your brain wanting to be released.

Throwing your gratitude list off track, reminding you that you are not living the joys of your dreams, of the future you’ve built in your head.

Dreams love a good interruption because they get to creep in again

A good interruption of your life; taxes, health, the sun, debts, your alarm.

This isn’t a campaign to debunk dreams

It’s just my way of saying dreams hurt too

Dreams don’t equip you with the tools on how to handle them

So you scrape the edges of the earth trying to build them, to harvest them

For a house — you build your wealth

For a lover — you build your yourself

For a child — you build your health.

But dreams hand it to you like pixie dust; weightless, sparkly, no backbone.

By the time the sun hits

You realise your dreams hurt you.

Bolane, only child of Olamide and Stella Stevens.

Bolane was the girl people envied, she had it all until her 16th year which coincided with the inflation of 2008.

Olamide lost it all, his job and also his mind but Bolanle gained a wardrobe filled with long sleeves and turtleneck tops.

As the prices of everything increased, Olamide’s demons activated.

Stella becoming the breadwinner drained the collagen from her skin, she lost her radiance and her patience but Bolane gained more long sleeves and turtlenecks.

Olamide’s demons would remind him of his glory days and how much he spent on his family, specifically

Bolanle but this time they presented it as a waste.

Showing that his riches would have stayed without bolanle, he soon started to picture bolanle as his enemy, the one who came and took it all away from him.

Not the government or his poor decisions, but Bolanle.

I have never seen a smile so bright, even in the face of adversity, even in pain and torture no one had a wider and brighter smile than Bolanle.

Behind that smile was her soul begging God, her tears flowing every night.

Weeping that she would stop being the enemy in Olamide’s eyes, weeping that Stella would see her as the one who once laid in her womb.

“I will throw you down the stairs and if you die, i can always have another child” Olamide said with his eyes all fired up like how Devils were displayed in movies.

Her screams got louder, her clothes became longer, his special brown belt gradually lost its colour and shine.

Stella watched it all in silence with an occasional contribution of destructive words.

Bolanle was a problem solver, could she be any perfect? Bolanle saved everyone around her even with no saviour on her side.

Her friends would always tease her and say her savior’s complex was competing with Jesus.

Bolanle cried for a saviour night after night but I guess only a blade heard her one night and it whispered to her to allow it to graze her wrist, for no one was coming to save her.

She had begged God to let her pass on every night because she had heard self death would lead her to eternal torment.

But that night Bolanle’s tears dried up and her blood flowed.

I’m currently listening to Ed Sheeran’s mathematics tour collection and I’m just thinking of the first time I heard his song.

I was 13, sitting on my bed with my laptop listening to the songs I collected from a friend with my flash drive ( Thank God for Spotify today) and Grade 8 by Ed Sheeran came up. Even though I was aware of the songs I collected from this friend, I definitely wasn’t aware of this one.

I had never heard of Ed Sheeran and I was so intrigued by the album cover, it was different from anything I saw, with a + sign written at the bottom.

The song started with 4 snaps and then a beat dropped with the words “my mind is a warrior, my heart is a foreigner”, with this intro I was already hooked on the song.

I played it several times and I said to myself “there has to be more of where this came from ( well duh albums exist).

So I went back to my music plug and found out she had the album but had not listened to it properly, she was also trying to grasp this new voice and just like me she collected it from someone’s laptop but this time intentionally.

Has an artist ever grown with you? Now of course this artist doesn’t know me and it’s not like we’re childhood friends or something but he grew with me.

Every single mathematical symbol album has a personal story attached to it, different points in my life when these albums were released.

The way he captures emotions like love, pain/sadness, anger ( trust me he got angry a couple of times) and joy, it’s like he knew you were going through the same thing at the same time.

As a Disney girl, he definitely makes me feel like the main character in his songs, songs like “Galway girl, Photograph, American town (I’m not even an English girl but I definitely felt like one), Collide. You know what? every single song with a girl involved, even if it’s about heartbreak 😂.

Now, am I hurt that I’ve never met this man ? Yeah duh of course but I know I will, just give me time and you know what, maybe he might just have a song with Coldplay by then and I will get to see all of them.

Anyway, this was pretty random but I really enjoy listening to music and let’s hope Ed Sheeran sees this !

-Signed OV

How to find balance when everything is happening at once.

Oh I don’t have the answer, I’m just as clueless as you.

On today’s episode of Newbie ( Not sure how I turned this into a series), It’s “balance”.

You started this new thing but there are other things in your life that need attention too.

You are holding all these things in your hand, trying to juggle it with both hands but one side seems to suffer or if you are like me, a couple more are. so just like you, I’m trying to create structure even if everything is happening at once.

I think i finally have an answer to the question “ What superpower would you love to have?”, It is definitely Bilocation.

I will call this Multitasking 2.0, this is not even making a to do list and allocating time for every activity, you are actually in different places at the same time! I’d definitely love to be in Paris and at my desk at work at the same time.

They would probably invite me to the Heroes HQ or whatever to confront me on the excessive use of my power.

Well, I don’t think balance exists (I may change my mind who knows).

We are just juggling and occasionally picking up the activities that fell off during the process.

Signed O.V.

You go through the four stages of grief but instead of “Denial” being the first, In this case it is “Joy or Excitement” especially if it is something you decided to do without any external or even internal force.

Acceptance being the last stage, is when you come to terms with being new. You decide here to be patient with yourself and at this point, your eyes open to see your improvement and even if you started a week ago, you start to see you are whole lot different from the moment you started.

Signed O.V.

Leaving your body, mind and soul to the one who created it and this is not even a situation about death. You are alive but you have decided to let the one who does everything right, no stain , no blemish to handle YOU. People would say submission but I think I prefer using abandonment because it makes your mind ponder deeply about it.

I found myself worrying about something I have no control over, my overthinking level was on a 100 and in the process of making one thousand and one scenarios, I heard a voice “Abandon yourself with Christ”. In that moment everything became calm and clear, if I were hypertensive that would have pressseeeeddd my blood pressure to a perfect level.

Now I don’t know what I would call this write up but it definitely touched me and I had to share this lovely feeling.

Submission is the common word used for teachings like this but “Abandonment”? For me that’s fantastic! The word doesn’t have a good rep but just try it with this phrase or you can even switch it around and say “I abandon myself with Christ”. Ugh what a relief just typing it out. (This is not a “Submission vs Abandonment” type of thing but You already know my winner.) (okay okay back to the topic).

Side note: With Abandonment comes accepting the will of God even if it doesn’t seem great at the time but trust me it’s always for a good we don’t see immediately, it is building something bigger than our expectations.

Signed O.V