ROMANCE: "YOU WANT TO MARRY ME!" BY AJAKAYE STRIDA

You want to marry me!

Can you watch me read till 2:00 am before your romantic rights?

do you understand the peace I receive in academics?

I trust you know I literarily love thousands of men.

Do you understand that my professional roles begin by 7:00 am?

You want to marry me!

Don't feel unaware of my societal significance,

never complain when I get home late,

it is pure profession, not infidelity,

are you productively interactive?

You want to marry me!

Your passion for me must not threaten my unique zeal,

don't ever think me "overambitious",

I might kneel before you every morning for "good morning"

but never think about my self- value kneeling.

You want to marry me!

Can you tolerate me not being home a week for ESAN Conference?

Would my dream be important as your life to you?

Do you know I have been proudly single before your arrival?

Are you as busy as I am, and not attention hungered?

You want to marry me!

Know that I am as caring as you are to me,

I am as reliable as you are to me,

you are as worthy as I am to you,

read the aforementioned lines again if you want to marry me.

© RASHIDAT OLAMIDAYO AJAKAYE

STRIDA... guiding you to striking confidence in academic and creative writing!

- Nigeria 

2024

The poet persona says any man who wants to marry her must appreciate her personality as a career woman. Such that, a man who would qualify to be her husband must be in love with enhancing her value to not only him, but also her society and the world eventually.

SIR SAMPSON NGUEKIE' COMMENT

Lasting peace will prevail between the speaker in this poem and other people in the society if she just gets herself one child and stays single. I read on Facebook yesterday that husbands are great obstacles to the progress of their wives. My mother was such a victim, and I can never support it. I don't know why the majority of women believe that if they don't get married, they would be failures in their lives. Likewise men. Marriage is a tradition. Childbirth is a natural gift. Why should my natural gift be entangled with a tradition to the extent that if I don't respect that tradition, I would be considered a social misfit, an outcast? Well, let my relatives bring that my wife whom they promised to bring to me very soon. I would have travelled to Nigeria before they come with her. Maybe they will help themselves to husband her. It seems as if they have not yet had faith in my entire life celibacy. Thieves! The theft of one's privacy is the greatest theft of all time.