I read your words
Years after the grim’s scythe
Tore through the dark
Dividing our hearts
Into a thousand cries
Tell me, how does death sound
On the other side?
I read your words
At the start of noon
And it birthed constellations
In my eyes
the words of the dead
Weighs heavy on the chest
Than “lubs" and "dubs."
Tell me, how does the heart sound
On the other side?
How does the sunrise?
I read your words
In a Lagos bus
The driver trapped in the cruelty of living
The wheel in one hand
And a failed stick leading nowhere in the other
Tell me, how does the road move
On the other side?
I read your words
On your Facebook post
It tells of how proud you were
To crest my name on your lips
Like honey, melting, hugging the tip of your tongue
Your buds would dance all night
Breaking into melodies and rhythms of a thousand beeps
Your baby just survived a dreadful surgery
He is alive.
I read your words, Mother
Lines of poetry will fall
In the pleasant beauty
Of your heart.
I read your words
And it broke into a thousand arms
Holding me closely, tightly with a thousand hugs.
Peace, I’m still.
In the first days after Funmi ended things, you simply refused to believe that it was nothing more than another fight...
Read moreYour waist beads glimmer under the faint light illuminating your room from the bulb on your ceiling. You like...
Read moreIt's been almost a decade since your dad died, but you remember it as if it were yesterday. He was wearing his navy...
Read moreDeath has its underbelly, the subtle finality, gone to be no more. Die and end our miseries. I mentally wave off the
Read moreThe men who put numbers to the crates bite their beer-soaked lips and shake their drunk, little heads at...
Read moreI flip through the pages of my mind nondisruptively — a boy in a manger, star in the sky, preacher on the...
Read moreA woman's wedding day is her happiest day, right? Well, it's not like that for Bolu. Her wedding day was...
Read moreThree times he had tried–picked up the pen, put it down, almost written a word. The other students...
Read moreIt’s like clockwork: our love. You wake up each day and sit at your desk. I wake up too and watch you do your thing...
Read moreYou have come to associate full moons with bad luck. It was on a night with a full moon that you pushed out your child, still...
Read moreMy father's father made love to the earth. He worshipped it, bent towards its rising sunafter rising run and fed it sweat that...
Read moreI don't talk to strangers. What I mean is, I don't have unnecessary conversations with service people. If I have an appointment with a...
Read more