TOUGH GUYS LOVE HARD, TOO - By Cherry Fagbemi

I spent the last seventeen days on my knees, 

begging God for mercy, but it felt like a tease. 

I wandered about the empty streets, lost in the night.

I searched for you, my heart bruised from the fight. 

You might not believe it, but tough guys pray, too.

Your scars live in my mind like a haunting trace.

The bite marks on your thighs, a memory I can’t erase.

It’s why I lie awake, unable to sleep, drowning in despair. 

Shadows whisper your name, saying you are lost out there.

Just so you know, tough guys love hard, too.

Tears fall like raindrops from my weary eyes,

creating a river of sorrow where hope slowly dies.

My heart bleeds for you, tangled in knots,

desperately clinging to the memories of us.

If I’ve learned one hard truth, tough guys cry, too.

I drag the weight of your absence behind me each day. I stumble through heartache, knowing you’re far away. Haunted by echoes of your laughter, silence abounds now, leaving traces of our love in these desolate sounds. In case you’re still wondering, tough guys’ hearts break, too.

But if it takes the next decade to find my way back to you, I will never stop longing and searching, even when I’m blue. I never could have imagined you’d run away from me. Your absence creates a void in my heart that no other can fill. Unless you come back, V, this tough guy will fade away, too.   

What do I do when my memory card is full and my mind begins to fade? What do I have left if I can’t remember the best or worst of my days? What happens when I still have time, without memories or a working mind? Will they strip me of my dignity and take me from my family when I’m unable to think?

The births of my children and my time with them are quickly fading from my mind. Remembering when they were babies gets more challenging with time. What will happen when I mix up Saturdays and Sundays and forget which is my church day? When my mind no longer works, I lose focus, purpose, or control of my faculties.

When I drift and float in and out of darkness, lost, confused, and locked out of the present. What will the world do with me when I no longer recognize the places or even the moment? Will I be tucked away in a basement, hoping and waiting for when I draw my last breath? What if I think I’m living in the past century? Should I stay there thinking I’m already dead?

What if I’m stripped of my dignity, walk naked, talk crazy, and wander into the woods? Who’ll remember how I was before my mind told me I was still in my neighborhood? If you see me in the streets, disoriented, would you show empathy or cut your eyes and pass me? You say genetics is responsible. Call it Dementia as if it’s supposed to make me feel better.

Some may be aging nicely, faculties intact, with few wrinkles, but others, like me, not as much. My looks change and torment me, but facelifts and creams cannot stop me from aging. I become forgetful, restless, and confused. My imagination is the first thing I lose. As you go about your daily life, you remember when you were in primary school. I wish I could. My forties came, and I chatted, laughed, and traveled down Easy Street and Memory Lane.

Who will remember my youth and not this withered old prune steering at me in the mirror? Who will remind me of the days my skin was not so shriveled but smooth and supple? An older woman who has done her time. I’m left with a wrinkled body and a mind no longer mine. “A mind is a terrible thing to waste,” they say. But whether I work or waste it, I’m bound to lose it sooner or later.

My first decade went like a breeze. I read, wrote, and galivanted through my ABCs. My twenties took me for a wild ride while I tried to find my place in society. Man, I was on a high. I was lively, enlightened, and a perfect gal in my thirties, witty, funny, and sharp as a tack. Then, my forties came, and I chatted, laughed, and traveled down Easy Street and Memory Lane.

Then, BOOM, it hit me like a ton of bricks: my fifties came in and blindsided me. And there it is: the pesky old wrinkle, the sagging of my chin, and the thinning of my skin. I’m beginning to inch closer to the head of the line, fighting a losing battle against time. There is nothing I wouldn’t give to remember my childhood stories. 

To get through my pain, I became disoriented, agitated, and unable to control my temper. The words in my head trickled to my lips and left me at the mercy of an impatient caretaker. And if science is any guide, I will encounter the same things as those before me who have suffered past their prime. But in the meantime, I will nurture and embrace all those I love for as long as my mind lets me.