An Open Letter to a Nigerian CatFisher

I’ve been thinking of you, this morning.

Since the day I found out you weren’t real, when I looked into the real doctor, I’ve been thinking of how to write to you – to the real you.

Underneath it all, there’s a real you. I’m sure I touched upon it – with my poetry, with my writing.

So, I’m writing to the real you, this time — although, truth be told, I was writing to the real you, all the time.

Though you weren’t you.

Except in your responses to me; in your responses to my poetry.

“Charmed by your writing,” you wrote to me. That, I believe.

So, here I am, writing to you — to the human in you.

I told you, that first day, that I was skeptical of you. My senses were accurate; you were deceiving me. I don’t know why.

I’m told, and there are ways to learn, to surmise what your purpose was. I’m just a humble writer; just a humble poetess. I’ve not money to give you; only time. Only my time, and my writing.

So, I’m writing to you — for myself, this time.

Let me be open with you, for I am open (and that, incidentally, is why you’ve not hurt me):

I love what is real… and it was the real in you that kept me intrigued, that suspended my time with you, that suspended my disbelief.

It will never make sense to me that people deceive — whatever the reason, be it for money, for love, for attention. I am too real, too honest, too guileless to want in my life anything but what is real…

Even if a sweet romance with some intriguing man is beautiful to me.

For better or for worse, reality is what draws me; and honesty is what gives me strength. For better or for worse, truth, not lies, captivate my mind; beg me to enter any relationship, for any reason, and hold me, bind me to anything.

Birdsong; wafting breezes; thundering planes roaring through the sky. Chills from cool mornings and the heat of the sun in warm afternoons beckon me to stay, to indulge, to brave all else that may call to me. Truthful conversations, real reactions: these things draw me from whatever else I may feel — and not because I wish for something to happen, but because something is happening. Something real is happening.

And I am not afraid of shifts in weather, of shifts in personality; but only, ever, does deceit eat away at such things, for deception is the death of anything.

So, I ask you this: Why deceive? Why continue a deceit, a ruse when it was clear that you had nothing to take from me, when I could give you nothing more than time, when so much of my writing was yours, already, to read?

It is curious to me, for it was you who was caught in a trap of reality… and I have certainly been accused — before, by others to whom I gave my reality — of spinning a web in which they became caught.

You thought yourself the spider, and I the fly; but truth shows a mirrored reality: that truth, not lies, not deceit binds people. And it is truth, reality, openness that keeps us, nourishes us, gives us life — and love.

I get tired of the secrets; they’re only good when they’re revealed, in any case.

I’m intriguing only because I’m real, open, honest, vulnerable; and my vulnerability keeps me safe because I choose to be vulnerable — but not unwisely so, not naively so.

Conscious vulnerability is the safest place in all the world… because in this act, alone, I can see best all that there is to see; because I can see others’ shields sparkling, and I can see where vulnerability remains. I can see it, and I choose to prod those spots gently… not to cause pain, as others might; but to give life, to encourage increased vulnerability — with me, if with no one else.

So, take from me this:

You have a choice to be real, to be vulnerable, as I have seen you to be. You have a choice to read and respond, or not to respond and remain in your dark secrets.

But I live in the freedom of life, and I can feel the breath of breezes touching me; while you and all of those who shield themselves — in others’ skins, as you tried with me, or behind the walls of their other fictions — feel only what slips beneath the seams of your various armors.

I am real. And that is honestly the most valuable thing I have… but you cannot have all of my reality, nor anyone’s (not even your own), if you do not remove your own armor first and step into your own reality.

I hope, for your own sake, that you abandon this fruitless cause that isolates you so deeply.