By Timi Odueso
It is daunting to hold life like a glass of water; It’s more daunting to deliberately let it slip off. The Colours In These Leaves, a hybrid collection published by Jerry Chiemeke, beats the drum of adulthood and labels the sounds as refugees; loved, lost, lonely, and waiting to be found in (broken) camps .
Right from the opening essay, Jerry provides a relatable setting that shows a vivid representation of his community. This provides a relatable concept beaming the spotlight on struggles and trauma.
“It’s a typical day in this city that aims to sap the soul out of you. The ‘owners’ of the park call out their respective routes like they are reciting mantras, and the citizens stick to the corporate passenger cliché of suits and headsets. I step out in similar gear, but I still feel like an immigrant here, like a sheep in the big city. The lady who sits next to me in my office thinks that I had never heard of Jumia before I got here, and whenever she describes the sights and sounds of this city to me, there is always this ‘I’m sure you don’t have this in your place’ tone in her voice…”
This lends weight to the argument that a man truly is shaped by his immediate environment, and Chiemeke is at the mercy of said environment.
Another excerpt reads thus:
“The pressure on the windpipe from a knotted rope pales in comparison to the pressure faced from friends, from society, from family, from self, from Life”
Chiemeke wears his heart on his sleeve, and lets us in on his insecurities. It is a brave act which is relatable to the average citizen who has had to juggle through the famed Maslow hierarchy. It is essential to note how relatable the events in the book relay the nuances of temperament and vulnerability as common to young adults: the pressures from life, and self infused expectations. Chiemeke has peeled his skin and his wounds are laid bare in the wake of this flagellative act.
He proceeds to ruminate on the unrest that accompanies Life as a creative, amid the perennially lurking feeling of uncertainty and fear.
“You have lost the right to tell people to live their dreams because you are caving in to the fear of failure, fear of being perceived as fragile, fear of hunger, fear of being regarded as unstable, you sold out, you embarrassed the non-conformists you once dared to identify with, the treachery is unforgivable.”
His questions on humanity are incisive, quizzical, almost reproving.
“But how dare you? How dare you try to be happy? What were you thinking, that the shadows would just disappear? This is you, this is your existence, where days try to outdo themselves in a ‘which of us is darker?’ game show, and nights swear to strip you of any sort of warmth.”
Chiemeke’s infusion of prose and poetry bears a strong sense of intentionality. Across these pages, he is a traveller, expressing himself in every room; adapting to the hues, warmth, and chills.
In “Dear Ruth”, he sits with his ruins and composes a song from the debris of a romance that went up in smoke, stewing in self-awareness as he mulls over the warmth that he let slip away.
“Still you cared, still you loved, but I continued to torture you with my unavailability, until you ultimately threw in the towel, refusing to pour wine into sand anymore. You didn’t even enjoy the dignity of a formal goodbye or a closure meeting, I was cowardly and sinister like that…”
Introspective and confessional, this book sheds intense light on love (and the lack thereof), anxiety, discontent, societal pressure, loss, affectations, mental health challenges, and a bunch of other potholes that litter the long road to becoming a grown-up. Through the instrumentality of poetry and short essays, Chiemeke curates his lived experience into a compilation that dares structure, express personality and speak its truth through each page.
“The Colours In These Leaves” is an autobiographical, unfiltered and complexly woven narrative about the human condition. It’s grim, morose and promises no light at the end of the tunnel, but it holds up a mirror to the intricacies of young adulthood, amid sentences that are just as brutal as they are true. Chiemeke creates a body of work that is beautiful in its grit and rawness, but also leaves you wondering if you should direct him to a mental health professional. It’s hoped that his next full-length effort will involve a different set of subjects, or at the very least, an approach that is imbued with less darkness.
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