Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem. Biography & Quotes

“When a person lies to you once all you can think is what else. What else are they hiding? What other untruths have been said? To your face, to someone else; behind your back. And how. How do you begin to clean out this room in your heart? Unearth the love? Wash the walls clean white? Undo their stench from your blood. Their stench from your skin. And how. How do you begin to detach from them. And the you in them. And the I in us.”

“Lately, everything in my universe has made it hard to forget. I look at this new man sure he is everything I once wanted. But body does not feel the same when it is not my third or fourth hand holding it. The sweetness of an apple is not the sweetness of a grape. There is no tingle when he says name. No spark when he touches skin. We are not twins, Ejima. He is not you and I am not him.”

Love Romance Passion Chemistry

Author:Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem.

“Sometimes I fall for the mystery, thinking what I am falling for is the man.”

Love Passion Mystery

Author:Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem.

“Painful habits: 1. Forgetting friends to lose myself in lovers. Remembering them only when love is lost again. 2. Knowing that real love does not need convincing but trying anyway. 3. Building castles of projections, making pedestals out of dreams. 4. Crowning temporary visitors Kings.”

Love Passion Relationships Grief

Author:Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem.

“I do not want to touch your heart with dirty hands because you are a prayer. A thing I asked the heavens for. My light that guides the way. And I do not know how else to tell you that I love you but to listen when you speak. Feel your pain when you are hurting. Tell you I miss you when you are not with me.”

Love Romance Passion

Author:Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem.

“And so you travel. Forgetting that the problem is you. And where ever you go, you carry yourself.”

Pain Sadness Travel Distance Trauma Displacement

Author:Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem.

“These tragedies they write themselves. I always care that you don’t. You only care once I’m done.”

Sadness Tragedy Breakup Seperation

Author:Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem.

“Long days spent chasing wind, wanting to catch it between the palms of your hands. Last weekend distant again until another next Friday. Mondays welcome all that is unholy after the holiest day. Bosses command, say this like that. Do this more correctly. Stand at attention. Work skins flesh to bone.”

Work Slavery Hardwork

Author:Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem.

“But home is 6617 miles away; a burning building. A sinking ship. A dying thing.”

Home Distance Disaster Immigration Displacement

Author:Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem.

“Anyone causing you pain is hurting themselves.”

Pain Grief Compassion

Author:Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem.

“Two missed calls and you think your father is dead again. The conversation is rushed. Nuances of your new life are pushed into a speaker. They meet alien ears. At home; you are an old stranger. Away; you are a new one. All you have of your family is in a phone. And it is why you can never lose it.”

Fear Family Distance Immigration Forgetting

Author:Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem.

“You describe her as an Eden. This rare, unknowable place. Distant. And you tell me to wear her skin but I refuse. I shift in my seat. Distant. What is it about the men that go looking for old lovers in new women. And why is it that they always want you to touch them like she touched them. Wear her head like a show piece. Use her words as lipstick.”

Love Romance Drama Conflict Exes

Author:Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem.

“I cannot keep you if it is killing me to keep you.”

Freedom Empowerment Rising Sexual Violence

Author:Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem.

“Since you’ve been gone Nkem, I am not so sure what hardens me more. The days I spend wondering if my name and our shared memories still rummage through the quiet parts of your wonderful mind. Or the nights I must now waste imprisoned to this bed without you.”

Love Pain Loss

Author:Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem.

“My feet only ever fail me when it comes time to walk away from you.”

Loss Abuse

Author:Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem.

“Most mornings all I can think is I am the reason for one person's boulder. A rock to another. Both a joy and a woe in one life cycle. Both the abused and the abuser. The tortured and the torturer. It is not long till I realize that I am always thinking of what I can be to another and never to myself. You see, us humans, we make hundreds and hundreds of bad little Decisions hoping that one of them leads us to the answer. Not knowing that we are in the end, the only answer. The chosen ones. The ones to ourselves.”

Loss Grief Depression

Author:Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem.

“The heart betrays the mind by thinking for itself.”

Love Romance Betrayal

Author:Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem.

“Loving a black man feels like chewing glass. Drinking air. Fighting blood.”

Love Race Blackness

Author:Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem.

“It feels like a sort of self betrayal Your abuser makes you laugh in public; yet treats you like a wet napkin in private. To them you are only useful until your are disposable again. So you join in the laughter. Silence the ten angry women inside of you. Hoping that maybe, next time it is you and the abuser alone things could be a little bit different. But them or things; they never change. And you; you always stay. You always hope. You always laugh. It feels like a sort of self betrayal”

Violence Abuse Rape Jekyll And Hyde

Author:Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem.

“This is how apathy goes: First, old joys become new sorrows. Then all your mornings in bed transcend into eternities. Your best friend no longer calls because the new self is unrecognizable. And your father. Your father feels unfamiliar because you are growing and he is not.”

Depression Apathy Anhedonia

Author:Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem.

Ezinne Orjiako, Nkem. Biography

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