i began:
god, swear my body is not a keepsake for all your silences.
swear you can’t hear these things droning like terrified frogs in my head.
swear you do not know that i am unwelcome in this body.
Have you collected enough of your things?
This house tugs at you
a little girl looking for coins
searching for language to smooth things over.
A body is an excellence of bones
A union of skin
And breathing mishaps.
In the bank lobby, a little boy of seven walked up to me and slipped his hand into my palm. He was looking up at me and smiling. A woman stepped up, said, “Don’t mind […]
Their story ends at the point where the woman sobs uncontrollably at the airport while being held by her mother. I want to tell them she is not her mother. I want to tell them how their story will never carry the weight of this loss. I want to tell them how this loss will continue to live for as long as her life goes on. The loss will be in the next family picture they take and the first time she explains to her daughter what happened to Rex. For the rest of her life, she will have to split herself into two parents and complete conversations with his ghost, telling her daughter how he would have been proud of her.
I burn my father’s prayers in a heap of hemp, & marijuana. I, vagabond because the wind will not leave me. The road ahead is a forbidden way leading to a discotheque for lost boys. […]
I I looked at the wall gecko hanging on the wall close to my favourite suit. I was hoping for some inspiration. Maybe three nods from the crawling being should do the trick. I started […]
what tethers me to you are the umbilical cords/ spiral of our descent/ the rites of passage/ sacred acres of our beginnings what binds me/ are the incisions on our wrists/ panegyrics/ lyrics holding our […]
I carry my homeland
wherever I go. It shows and scents on my clothes.
Yesterday at the market, without telling her, a woman
said to me “ìlú àwọn alfa loti wá (you come from
the homeland of Mullahs).”
1 My father is an enigma. Growing up, the little I learned about him I gleaned from listening to snippets of conversations between my siblings. Even now, after all these years, he is still a […]