The Things We Lost
📅 April 18, 2026
I.
You’re rich, bored, idle. You have no friends, you don’t do telly, and you don't fuck with social media.
An idle mind is the Devil’s playground, you know this, for he’s been sitting in the corner of yours, flicking ideas at you like frisbees, one of which finally sticks. You wouldn’t know it then, else you would’ve taken heed to the 17th verse of 1st Thessalonians’ 5th chapter and fled for your life. Instead, you mull. Finally taking the decision to act on it, you call Ola.
__________
The roads are quiet, clean and bathed with yellow light. A few men on black are doing what they do best – extorting.
Ola has this one trick where he flips on his siren to get through roadblocks and shit traffic. He does it now. The policemen, under the impression that we are some important government official wave us through without hesitance. It’s the craziest thing in this country, how people in a presumed position of authority are trusted to have no ill intent.
We keep driving till we get to Wuse II.
You see Wuse II, yes? It’s the life of the party, that one. While Asokoro is anxious to maintain its reputation and Maitama has that rigid old charm averse to flamboyance, Wuse II, not giving a fuck, blends the affluence of both with the freedom of spirit humans are wont to seek. From top-tier hotels to the glitziest restaurants, from buzzing clubs and sin-filled lounges to suya stops and gambling spots, this restless playground is the Gomorrah of hoes and heathens. Being 1 AM, they’ve all come to play.
Girls (of all kinds) line the road. You wind down and, like ants, they crowd your window, right in your face. Two make it home with you, one of whom has a pair of breasts you could lose a prick in, and the other with a bod so soft even the grip of her dress can’t hide all that suppleness.
There’s one more thing, though, to get. It is why you came. You make some whispered inquiries and calls are made. In minutes, a scowling fella appears and slips into your car, flashing his merchandise with his left hand, the right cautiously by his side. You haggle over the price and come to a quick conclusion. You make the transfer, and he makes a call and confirms. You both shake hands – something passes – and he disappears into the night.
You take a peek. It’s a bunch of white stones tightly nestled in a dirty cellophane. Two tubes and a lighter are in another. It’ll be one helluva night.
___________
It starts like a joke, one purchase after another. Funds are surplus to fund it so it’s not a problem. Yet. But little by little, the creeping feeling that you just might have become one of the people you always sneered at pulls up on you. No, you say. You are not (yet) an addict. You can stop when you want to, you say. And haven’t you worked enough? Haven’t you toiled enough? Don’t you deserve some debauchery? Yeah, sure you do. Still the thought persists that this just might be like no other, that you might be losing control.
To prove it to yourself that you are not an addict, you take a decision to stay off of it for a few days.
On day one, you’re successful and you feel pretty good. On the morning of day two, you feel good still, but in the evening, your thoughts start to drift to those pretty little rocks getting piled atop each other. You think of that delicious rush down your lungs. The thought of it is so strong you almost start to taste it, to smell it. You think of altering the mode to get a different, more intense form of high. You think of the songs to pair it with. You think up scenarios, past, present and future to make it have more meaning. And you think of girls, the euphoria of peaking right in the middle of it.
Now, you can’t take it anymore. Your hands are starting to get sweaty and quiver. You had deleted his number, but miraculously so, you dig it out, pause, dial, ask for three and begin the countdown.
Time passes so slow that you almost start to cry for joy when he finally calls to say he’s a minute away. You nearly run out in fact.
Back in your house, right on your table, debit card in hand, you begin to gather and crush, one rock after another. You load it up. Fire. Inhale deep. The world takes a loooong pause, then resumes like a trance and moves in slo mo. The binge starts. As if to make up for the past one day of sobriety, you order even more till you find yourself the next morning sweating, crawling, torch in hand, searching desperately for anything that looks like a white rock.
__________
Your eyes are starting to pop, your teeth are brown, and your lips are dry, cracked and ashen. Your collarbones are starting to show, your belly’s a small balloon and your neck is skinny enough to fit in a handcuff. You who obsessed about your hair, who groomed your beards, you now look like a lowly city gate bum from ancient Rome. To hide these, you begin to hide from the world, and on the days you can’t, you use beanies, long sleeves and sunshades as covering.
Your missed calls are piling and so are your bills, jobs and dirty clothes. You used to call momma and sista first thing in the morning, but now you cannot bear the guilt of hearing the hopeful innocence in her voice, her belief in something – or someone – that is now quietly dying, struggling not to go to waste. The things that once anchored you, those routines and small responsibilities, you let them go one after the other with a shrug. You make a case why they should not be that important, how you could actually do without them. All that is left is the habit, what first started as a joke.
You cannot let go, no. You who never owed, who never borrowed, you are now scrolling through your contacts, thinking up schemes all to secure that hit. After this one, you swear, may God strike me if I ever go back. But after that one, you decide it didn’t hit quite that deep, so you go right back, setting the cycle running.
It’s five in the morning, your throat is swollen, your ears are ringing, your stomach is bloated, and you’re trapped in bed, too spent to look life in the eye, too trapped in a tornado of emotional pain to acknowledge life going in reverse. Outside, you hear the helps sweeping. Dawn has begun to unravel, pale light filtering through your curtain. Someone has begun to warm his car; you hear the gates creak open. Life has begun for all but you. Hard as you might, you can neither hide from the world nor the activities in it, stark reminders of your self-sabotage.
Your life used to be ordinary. It used to be unremarkable. You didn’t love it, but you didn’t hate it either. It was yours, at least. At least the days passed without chains, and you lived them without any need to escape yourself. It was a version of you that didn’t need to hide, that didn’t need to fight to keep as simple a thing as a clear mind.
What once felt ordinary now feels like a treasure misplaced, and ironically, is what you’d give anything to get back. You see no way out.
To quiet the disgust you feel, you tell yourself you need a moment of happy, a hit, some good shit one last time. You’re fully aware that every decision like this is another shovelful of earth burying you deeper, but you’re unable to resist (in fact, almost happy to not be able to), choosing to anchor redemption on some distant future.
You’re starving, but that hardly matters. You pick up your phone, fidget a little, say fuck it and just make an order for “3 market and 2 ST”
One day, you tell yourself as you pace and wait, I will quit.
Yeah… nah.
II.
The day you turned on “disappearing messages” instead of just blocking “Cousin”, you knew. When you started to dim your screen and tilt it away from your Dim Oma when he sat close to you, you knew. Nothing had happened yet but like you knew it would, you grew unusually kind to him, as though to compensate for what you were going to do.
Dim had never been a strong person. He lacked… what was it, presence? Yes, that was the word. Presence. He was just there, calm and spineless, like a water leaf. He was the kind of guy who wore his glasses and still fumbled through the simplest things, like needing a pair of scissors to slice a condom wrap open. He would ask you 113 times if “it” was good, like he was afraid to just say “sex”, and if you told him yes, he’d disagree and promise to do better. He was too perfect, and that was his curse.
With Dim, there was neither tension nor unpredictability. He was like a schedule, a timetable. In giving you all you wanted, never complaining, always acceding, he denied you the thrill that came with the small victory of starting and winning an argument.
You valued peace, but not this kind. Peace was sweeter after a war. Unruffled peace like this was tiring, flat, like a lifer’s routine.
But this other man, “Cousin”, was another matter. His real name was Yahye Waarsame Digaale. He was Somali and his unwillingness to forgive was something you considered manly.
Yahye Digaale had been your neighbor for months. You had never spoken to him, and he had never spoken to you, that is, until the day your Cane Corso broke her leash and attacked his Shih Tzu. He hadn’t raised his voice. His face showed nothing, not even alarm, and he hadn’t even acknowledged you, your stupid Corso, or your irresponsible apologies. He had simply picked up his injured puppy and walked away.
You’d gone back home thinking it was over. By 3.57 p.m. the next day, you got served by his attorney.
You didn’t tell Dim. Instead, you hissed and folded the letter, slipped it back into the envelope, and sent it to him [Yahye] with a handwritten note that said,
Understood. I assume this is how you say hello!
A few days later, he replied in similar fashion.
“Next time,” said the note, “say it to me.”
He’d left his phone number too.
_________
You couldn’t name the territory you’d stepped in when you added that number, but it felt wrong, like snooping around a crime scene. Conversations hadn’t even started, but the fact you intended to hide it was enough to tell you where this was probably headed. You damn well knew this. At the time you consoled your conscience that all you were trying to do was figure out this iron-willed lunatic and that that was going to be the extent of it.
Right.
Somewhere along the line (and this, you realized with a bit of concern), his messages became something you began to check for without thinking. This was becoming something dangerous, something you refused to admit. It was slowly digging you into a pit, but you cared just enough to be certain you’d be out of before it got too deep.
You had begun to track his last seen on WhatsApp, had begun to walk your Corso more. You’d started to look at your phone more, no beep or buzz went unchecked. The day you finally got curious enough to ask why he’d turned on his “disappearing messages”, he chuckled and said something in the line of how things usually got more honest when two people kept talking like this.
What was “this”? You knew exactly what he meant but wanted to ask him for the sake of clarity, ultimately deciding not to. He would answer with sarcasm, and you didn’t want him using that tone with you.
That was the ghen ghen moment, the day you turned yours on too.
___________
It’s a Thursday and you’re at his door. Your dog has gastroenteritis, you say, and did he by chance have FortiFlora?
He’s looking at you and you’re looking at him.
Yes, he says and steps back a little. Come in.
It’s funny how these things happen; how you know it’s going to happen and actually want it to happen yet think you can skirt ‘round the edges and go as far as letting it happen without actually letting it happen. You know if you step in, you’re going to fuck that man. Not flirt, not make out. Fuck. You tell yourself that you’re married, and that being married will guarantee restraint. Armed with that ‘assurance’ you step in.
He doesn’t start with a single kiss. He starts with like seventeen; gentle, peaceful ones that keep on going without breaking the rhythm.
You are trying to speak through it – (Waarsame, this is not right. Plea- Ahh… This is not– Waars–) but his lips taste like dark wine and your words just keep dissolving.
His pleasure increases yours and guilt is out the window.
By the time you both are done, the first thing that hits you is a simple question. Why?
_________
You are home, replaying everything that just happened. You are searching for the answers to the “why” question. You have even taken two showers to wipe Yahye off your skin. You didn’t know why you did it, and that is most confounding. You feel all kinds of disgust, like you just went down on your grandpa. You are still looking for a language to soften this guilt when Dim walks in with an infant car seat first, then a stroller, and finally the packets of diaper and feeding supplies.
He has the smile of someone who’s going to be a father and he’s showing you all the stuff he bought, looking to you for approval. You are smiling but you’re avoiding his eye, afraid that he might see the treachery. A pack of diaper is in his hands which he sets down, then he takes off his glasses, wipes them slowly and puts it back on.
Is something wrong? He asks with a hand on your arm. Are you okay?
It’s just the pregnancy, you say.
It’s the way he unquestionably accepts this lie. It’s his innocence, his utter lack of suspicion. These are the things murdering you now.You hate him so much right now for being so good. If he was a cruel person, you’d have at least reached out and grabbed that as reason for your why question.
You hear him telling you it’s okay, that he’d call in sick tomorrow so you can spend a longer weekend together.
Months pass. You move through each day carrying guilt around like a sack of rocks that settles deeper and deeper and deeper. You hate yourself, and to punish yourself, you look for something to make that hate heavier, so you unblock Yahye and text him.
Are you home?
Don’t just scroll past—jump in and say something. Drop your thoughts in the comments, we actually want to hear them.
Enjoyed it? Share it. Didn’t enjoy it? Share it anyway—start a conversation.
Our GUEST CONTENT section is open, and we’re always looking for voices. Writers, artists, creators—if you’ve got something to say or show, this is your space. Create it, upload it, get featured, get seen.
Seen something you like? From sculptures to our Tiimbooktu merch, head over to the “OUR THING” section, make your pick, then DM us through any of the links in the footer—it’s that simple.
And don’t disappear on us—follow us on social media and stay connected.