your dreams will collide/with deadlines
Èjìrẹ́, Aráìsokún, ẹdunjobi, Ọmọ ẹdun tí ń ṣeré orí-igi. Ọ̀kan ni mo bèrè, èjì ló wọlé tọ̀ mí wá. You were asleep when you were born, in my hand, your reflection split into two. The men who were hired to forsake your silence brought drums & took you out to it. I looked back at …
& though I have lived so long in darkness, tonight I climb out of the cave to look up at the moonlit sky that sees me first and smiles God knows, happiness and the sky long to see me like villagers yearning for the moon to step out Tonight I smelt my aches, shapeshift …
He brought an honesty to work deemed unskilled and menial. A self-respect that towered over the egos of overlords occupying fancy positions, in a hierarchy of thanklessness. He had to work. As a younger man, he preferred the solitary jobs that kept him away from the world for days and weeks. Sometimes it got …
My brother, held tight to his belief like a limpet holding onto algae, chewing it off a hard rock. So when he joined Boko Haram, we only saw it on the leaf he left us that read: I have left to strive in the path of my Lord. Ya Ilahi, I agree, belief eats at a …
A child’s need to be chased, to hide and be found time and again, is why my father is the ghost stalking my dreams. When I was a child, hunting for where to hide and wait for my friends to seek, I found, inside an abandoned yard with an unfinished building, a hole in the …
I have never wanted to forget. But I have faltered in remembering.
