By Fortune Aganbi

The day I learned the meaning of the word “abnegation”, I was thinking of stars. Not stars as in heavenly bodies, but human stars. The likes of Beyoncé and Cristiano Ronaldo. When a human being is called a star, the connotation is that the person is very successful and accomplished. And I thought about the stars that twinkled out and wondered what their last breaths were like. Did Michael Jackson hear the whisper of his last breath before it escaped him? What was Martin Luther’s breath like? Did it resemble the puff from a cigarette? Was it an inhale or an exhale? Mind you, all of these have absolutely nothing to do with the word abnegation. I think about the stars that are shining currently. Many will twinkle out before their deaths. I have always wondered if Rihanna’s last breath would smell bad; perhaps when she is old and grey.

Are the last breaths of stars any different from the last breath of ordinary men like me? They have to – something that can be trapped in a jar and kept in a museum perhaps.

Dear last breath, I’m very curious you see, and I’m wondering what you would smell like when the time comes… how you would be formed. What would you be like? Who would be with me when you arrive? Will you be deep? Sinking my chest so low it breaks? Will you be so shallow that even I won’t be able to listen when you slip away from me? Would I even be aware? Would I be too busy trying to retain you that I would miss the moment when you leave my body for good? Where do you go after you leave? Do you hang around for a few seconds scorning the body or do you disappear, mixing yourself with the air that is already so dense with many other last breaths? Would you brush against the cheek of my lover who may be sitting beside my body weeping? Or would you escape through the hole of a vehicle door after the accident happens? Would you stay in my vein a little longer teasing my blood and dating it to not run cold? If I took poison and ended my own life, will you be angry?

When my grandmother died in the darkness of her empty room, did you mix with the permanent smell of kerosene that stuck to my clothes whenever I visited? Were you there when she was buried? Did you perform magic that we didn’t see?

I must confess that the thought of you amuses me. I know you must be very proud of having all that privilege. Over a million breaths are taken in a lifetime and you are the lucky last one. You must feel even luckier than my first breath. Nobody pays attention to first breaths anyway. So, you are stuck inside me now somewhere, maybe in my trachea, waiting for your big moment. How long will you wait? One more day? Two more years? Forty-five years later? Should I be scared?

I have imagined dying on Mars; sulphuric elements burning my insides. Supposing that happens, would you survive if you escaped me? Would you become toxic and make the last moment difficult for me? What if I drowned in River Ethiope… my body a free meal to the goddess Olokun, would you flow with current or mix into the emerald green of the Waters?

Dear Last Breath, it would please me immensely if you could reply, maybe crawl into my dream tonight as an old woman with one eye and no legs and prophesy to me in codes and parables what you would be like at the end of my journey. But if that isn’t a request you can grant, I beg thee, if it ever happens that you leave my body when I’m pushing out this baby I am carrying inside me, be kind. As you escape me, enter into my child and become her first breath. I want to live on.

Yours sincerely,

A tired soul.