'The Stairway' by Fu'ad Lawal

Nostalgia hits you at the back of your mouth, behind your eyes, at places just beyond reach. Your throat swells and you feel sweetness at the back of your mouth. Your tear glands swell till you think they’ll burst.

Nostalgia is the longing.

Thirty stairs lead to the front door of their old apartment on the second floor. Seventeen years have passed but she remembers this like she remembers lunch on Sunday was jollof rice and chicken. She feels the brown rust on the rails like it is gold. Nothing has changed, she says smiling. And for memories sake, she climbs.

One. She’s seven again, climbing like the memories are glass beneath her feet that her weight might shatter.

Two, three, four, five, the first landing. She rubs her elbow, greeting her oldest scar, the one this landing gifted her.

Six…eight…ten…twelve, second landing.

Thirteen…fifteen…seventeen…eighteen, third. Her idea of right being good and left being bad died here. The door to the left was Nasir, her happiness after school, on weekends and holidays. To the right was Baba, the old man who we the children believed hated happiness.

Four more steps, fourth landing. She laughs. Mum’s cooking always called her nose from here. Always.

She climbs to the final landing. Its twenty-seven, not thirty stairs. And as reality drains the strength from her knees, it is then she realises she was wrong all the time.

Nostalgia is the pain in longing.

This memory flaw is black ink in her pure water. In its spreading, every memory this place held is ruined. The sweetness in her mouth stings as her tear glands open.

Twenty-nine, not thirty, is everything, her get-happy-quick memory. It is here she swears dad told mum he’d never leave. The only place she remembers them happy, together.

Fuad Lawalis a poet and copy writer. He blogs at rebelliousflash300.wordpress.com and runs stock photography website snapaya.com . You can follow him on Instagram/Twitter @fuadxiv

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