you are a museum

people stare at you and are stunned by your looks and feel.

a former place where i worked was quite a distance from my house. By bus it took me roughly 2 hours to get home.

i worked evenings between 3pm and 11pm so if you do the maths, if i’m lucky i get home by 1am ish.

i did that for a bit up until i was introduced to this amazing coworker (Mrs Nwabisa).

She offered to take me home whenever we worked same day.

it took me a while to just accept it gracefully instead of questioning it because it didn’t make sense to me at the time. She was going out of her way, adding time to her own commute, just to make sure i got home in time. and she never once let me put gas in her car. Never made it feel like a favour i owed her.

it was just what she did.

i’ve since left the job and have a car now.

Gif by Giphy

without thinking about it, i started doing the same thing for colleagues. Dropping them off after work, no questions, no requests for gas money.

Just “i’m going this way, get in”.

framed by author

when i saw this words by Dunsin’s space💗 it made sense.

i wasn’t just being kind, i was carrying Mrs Nwabisa forward. Somewhere in me, her habit had become my habit and her generosity, mine.

that’s the strange thing about the people who have ever been good to you. You don’t just remember them. You leave fingerprints of them on elevator doors as you hold them open, and as you tip jars at coffee shops, and with the cashier when you buy your new fav t-shirt.

i hope the next time you meet someone, you remember you don’t just meet them, but you meet the ghosts of those they’ve ever met.

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whose ghost are you carrying into every room you walk into?