I know I’m a worrier.

But not the usual kind.

I don’t worry that my “s” lacks the perfect curves after I submit my exam answer scripts. I don’t fret that my e’s sometimes look like c’s or even i’s without the dot. I don’t even worry that my hair’s been loosened and unmade for like 5 weeks thereabouts. And I don’t worry that I might fall or miss a step when I choose to walk on those narrow concrete coverts instead of walking on the actual road.

Instead, I worry about an ant.

 One that strays from its line of comrades.

I worry about its lostness, its vulnerability. Because how do you even begin to find your way back when the world doesn’t speak your language?

That same ache followed me the day I saw a schoolgirl walking just ahead of me.

Her legs bore dark, crisscrossed scars like a language written in pain. Wounds that once screamed now hushed into patterns across her skin.

I wondered what it felt like when the cane first met flesh. I worried if she flinched, or if she had learned not to. I worried what it looked like when it was fresh.

She walked like someone who had gotten used to carrying pain in silence, and I couldn’t stop worrying that the healing of such scars only happened on the outside.

I worry about the beggar crouched by the roadside at Ojodu Berger.

I was in a moving bus and a fellow passenger threw some money at him.

The money landed near him, but he didn’t see it.

He didn’t know his answer had come. . I worried the breeze would take the money away. I worried someone else could find it.

I worried he could stay there, waiting, praying and never knowing he was already seen. I worried as we drove farther, until the rearview mirror couldn’t show me what became of him.

I worry about the snail a child crushed underfoot one time.

I wondered, is snail aware?? Did it sense danger before it struck? Could snail perceive the fatal evil looming in the shadow of the boy’s shoe before it came down?

Did it feel the air shift? Did it hear the world tense in that split-second before the crush?

Did it feel the crack of its own shell, and the shattering of its body from the inside out?

I wouldn’t know so I worried how the crunchy sound  sounded to the one it shattered.

I heard snail hiss and wondered if the sound was the snail’s scream.

We heard it as nothing. But for the snail, maybe it was the loudest goodbye.

I worry about a cockroach turned on its back, legs wriggling, spinning in circles of panic. I could see its frustration and a flip with my foot would have ended its suffering; but its kinsman once flew and landed and crawled on my neck and I’d sworn that the whole roach clan would pay.

So I left it, And then, in spite of myself, I worried about that, too.

I worry about the lonely mango that chose to stay aloft on the tree, far beyond reach. Maybe from selfishness, or pride, or fear of falling I don’t even know.

It won’t be picked. It won’t be eaten.

So I worry that it will rot, slowly, inch by inch, its sweetness wasted. I worry it will shrivel, and fall. Not into hands, but into forgetting.

I worried about the umbrella my mom packed out while cleaning the house for Christmas.

How it must have shielded someone once, how it braved storms, how it bent against the wind, defying its force.

That day I watched it upside down, crooked and ribs exposed.

Then I wondered; would umbrella have preferred to have never been used and stay pristine?

Or would it still choose the rain and the wind, despite knowing damage was unavoidable?

I worried the umbrella mourned the days of relevance. I worried it felt fulfilled regardless.

The balloon still floating days after my nephew's birthday party? I worried about that too.

The sitting room had been cleared, the cake eaten, the crowd long gone.

But I watched the balloon holding on tightly, deflating slowly and losing shape with quiet dignity.

I wondered if it knew the laughter had stopped.

I worried it didn’t know the celebration had ended.

I worried if it was waiting for someone to say, “Thank you” or at least, “You mattered” before it sank completely. I just can't help it.

I also worry about Sagamu street dogs; those scrawny creatures with extra large ears that do more wagging than their tails. Dogs reduced to bags of bones in skin sagging like oversized clothes.They walk like they’ve stopped hoping to be fed.

They look both ways before crossing the road, not from caution, but from memory.

You can tell they’ve been kicked before. They’ve been chased away from pots, cursed at by tired traders, swatted with brooms, ignored by children and followed by defiant flies.

I worry that they've been hungry for so long, they no longer remember what full feels like.

I worry they were once named and loved before their names vanished just like the shine of their fur.

I worry if they ever catch their reflections in puddles after it rains, and see what they've become.. .

These are the things I worry about.

 Not the misshapen letters. Not my undone hair. But the things no one else pauses for.

Maybe worry is how I love. Or maybe it’s how I see. And maybe that’s the cruelest part.

The world keeps spinning while these small heartbreaks vanish into silence. Not because they lacked meaning, but because we’ve been taught to look away.

To crush the snail and never flinch.

To walk past the girl with wounded legs like her scars aren’t speaking. To keep moving, even when something inside us begs to stop and feel.

We live in a world that rewards moving on, so we learn to step over the snail without thinking, to walk past bruised skin like its scenery.. and we ignore the quiet breaking happening right beside us. 

But what happens when it’s not a snail??

What happens when it’s someone’s voice, their spark, the very light in their eyes that is being stomped out?

We adapt. We numb. We shrug. We move.

But the truth is, some bruises don’t fade.

And the deepest kind of harm?

It’s not the wound itself. It’s the silence that follows.

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