You Smile by Chika Onyenezi

You awake, and it’s the twenty first century on the calendar, but your location reads eighteenth century in its wild attitude and lifestyle. You look around and are still in the same country; a country that contradicts your very existence and buries your goals before they are hatched. You smile; though there is nothing to smile about. You are young in age but your heart is much older. You have endured the mishmash education of the body while your soul feels uneducated and yearning to be comforted. Your soul wants to hope for a job and a fat salary paid to you every month for a luxurious lifestyle, but your body knows it is farfetched. You hope, and hope, because you are used to hope and live in a land of hope. You are a young graduate from the university in your local. You hope to have a job that will let you drive a car and walk boldly on the street like every successful young man in the city.

This story has been selected for the annual StoryTime anthology African Roar 2012, please go to the African Roar site for more info.

You Smile was written by Chika Onyenezi.

Copyright © Chika Onyenezi 2011.

Chika Onyenezi was born on the second December 1986, he is an editor at AuthorMe a popular international literary magazine and currently studying Computer Science at Caritas University, Enugu.

He is a peace activist, and a member of Green Lake Peace Network founded by Dr. Claude Shema-Rutagwengwa.

He is currently in Nigeria and writes from the city of Owerri and Enugu and blogs at Grey Scale