The Last Key

My father died with all his keys still on the ring. House key. Padlock key. The tiny brass one for the old suitcase he never opened. Office key for a job he left in 2002. A car key for a Toyota that rusted behind the house.

I inherited the ring and the silence. For six months the keys sat in a drawer. Metal teeth biting into each other whenever I opened it for salt. I couldn’t throw them away. I couldn’t use them. It felt like betrayal to turn a lock he would never turn again.

Then the power went off for three days. Harmattan dust covered everything like ash. Lagos went quiet without generators. On the second night, I held the ring to the window, letting moonlight pass through the spaces between the keys. Shadows fell on the wall like codes.

Each key was a door he opened without me. The padlock key to the shop he lost in 1998 when the market burned. The suitcase key to letters he never sent my mother after she died. The office key to a desk where he once signed papers. The car key to a time when he drove us to school and bought suya on Fridays.

I tested them one by one. The house key still worked. The padlock key opened a rusted lock in the backyard where he tied his bicycle. Inside the shed: a bicycle frame, no wheels. Dust, no memory. The office key didn’t fit anything. That door was gone.

The suitcase key was last. The suitcase was under his bed, covered in wrappers and camphor. When the key turned, the lock gave a sigh. Inside: not letters. Not secrets. Just folded cloth. His first shirt as a young man. Thin at the elbows, collar frayed. The smell of him still trapped in the cotton – tobacco and aftershave.

I put the shirt on. It hung loose. In the mirror I looked like a boy in his father’s clothes. The sleeves came past my wrists. I rolled them up.

That night, NEPA brought light back. Lagos remembered its noise. I took the keys off the ring. Left the house key by the door. Dropped the padlock key in the backyard soil. But I kept the suitcase key.

The next morning I bought thread and needle. I sat by the window and mended the shirt at the elbows. Small stitches. Slow work. The shirt was too big, but thread could fix that, small-small.

My father kept keys for locks that no longer existed because he believed new doors would come. I don’t know what door this key will open yet. Maybe none. Maybe one I haven’t built.

The shirt still fits now. When I wear it, people say I walk like him. I tell them yes. I’m learning the steps. The key in my pocket is warm. It feels less like what he left behind, and more like what he left me to find.

Joseph Marcel Ikhenoba is a passionate writer.  He has published in Poetry South, Active Muse, Short story.net, PoemHunters, Writers Space Africa, Kinsman Quarterly and elsewhere.  He loves reading and writing. https://www.linkedin.com/in/joseph-marcel-4060bba8.