Cold and old.
Some like it cold,
not old: at least not old
to the point where mold
grows on the top after it has been
sitting snug on the shelf where the
suspected ADHDed mother set it
down because God did
not create her with seven
arms (“What was
He thinking?”

she wonders
to herself, clearly
more experienced than
Him at this mothering
thing.) She proceeds to tell Him ALL
about His inadequacies as a designer
and how it is His fault that she has
been wondering where
her favorite coffee mug
has been hiding
for two weeks.

He listens,
then asks her
“Why do you not use
that one powerful mouth I
gave you and express to your husband
and children the four hundred brilliant things
you have going on in your mind that
would easily mobilize, not
just seven, but ten more
capable arms?”
She squirms

because she
never grew up
in this Nigerian culture where
children help and respect adults
and so she does not know how to delegate
and demand responsibility. She has been guilt-
tripped into believing that she has to keep
the children and her husband on
her breast, like, how she has
heardsay, the
more in-touch-

with-nature
Africans do.
While she does not mind
her husband on her breast
so much, (because some like it hot,
and she is one of the some) she is liking
the idea of getting her children more
responsible, and yeah, she
agrees that, like how she
has had to
realize it,

her husband,
too, needs to
realize he is not a helpless
little boy and needs to act
like he actually had a role in the birth
of their children. She needs to get beyond
that intimidating stonewall and put her
foot down and switch on
her own stonewall so that
he can know it.
Really, society

is how it
is because we
continue, in the name of
so-called Biblical order, (I
wonder if we have, the majority of us –
especially us women – ever really studied
the Bible or got alone on knees) to
tolerate and promote childish,
irresponsible behavior.
Husbands and
children and

wives all
alike ought
to understand that cold
and old coffee that has to
be reheated in the microwave was never
how God intended this life to be. Some like
it cold, but no one likes it old. And,
personally, I like it hot –
not reheated hot. I like
it fresh out-of-
the-pot hot.