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Writer | Speaker | Creative Voice. I tell stories, make calls & design confidence. @ Yabatech
Lagos, Nigeria
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A ghost called my future
<blockquote><em>Author’s Note: This piece explores the friction between the exhaustion of the present and the silent potential of the future. It is a meditation on the debt we owe to the person we are yet to become.</em></blockquote><p><br/></p><p>My father’s house was a wreck of loud memories.</p><p>But today, it felt… still.</p><p>The cracked cement under my feet remembered me.</p><p>The door didn’t.</p><p>It was new. Dark, expensive wood that looked like it had never been slammed in an argument.</p><p><br/></p><p>I knocked.</p><p>The lock didn’t just open.</p><p>It decided I was finally allowed in.</p><p><br/></p><p>Inside, the air didn’t smell like old dust or frying oil. It smelled like clean linen and the kind of peace I’ve been too busy to afford.</p><p>She was standing by the window.</p><p>It took me a second to breathe.</p><p>She had my eyes, but the frantic, tired twitch was gone.</p><p><br/></p><p>She looked like me — if I had ever been allowed to just stop and stay quiet.</p><p>She wasn’t beautiful like a magazine. She was beautiful like a finished house.</p><p>I looked down at my shoes.</p><p>Scuffed. Gray with the grit of a long day.</p><p><br/></p><p>Standing there, I felt like a smudge of charcoal in a perfectly white room. </p><p>My pockets were heavy with all the small, jagged worries I carry around like loose change.</p><p><br/></p><p>“Who are you?” I whispered.</p><p>“I’m the version of you that made it,” she said.</p><p>Her voice wasn’t a performance.</p><p>It was just steady. A hot, sudden shame hit me.</p><p><br/></p><p>“I’m so tired,” I admitted, my voice finally breaking. </p><p>“I don’t think I have the legs for the rest of this.”</p><p>She didn’t hug me.</p><p>She didn’t tell me it would be okay.</p><p>She just looked at me with a gaze that felt like a mirror I couldn’t dodge.</p><p><br/></p><p>“If you stop now,” she said, her voice hard as bone,</p><p>“I die."</p><p>I’m just a ghost until you finish the walk.”</p><p>The room began to blur.</p><p><br/></p><p>The smell of clean laundry faded back into dry grass and the heat of a Lagos afternoon.</p><p>My friend’s hand hooked into my shoulder, pulling me back.</p><p><br/></p><p>“You’re zoning out,” she laughed.</p><p>“Come on. We’re late.” I looked at the empty, rusted frame of the old house.</p><p>She was gone.</p><p>But the weight in my chest didn’t feel like a burden anymore.</p><p>It felt like an anchor.</p><p>I pulled my bag higher on my shoulder.</p><p>And I started walking.</p><p><br/></p><p><strong>I have a woman to build.</strong></p><p><br/></p><p><br/></p><p><br/></p>
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