My Face is a Portrait that Bears my Father’s Name.
On Saturday mornings, I am stirred awake by the fragrance of fresh akara, the oily sweetness filling my nostrils like a perfume wafting off a young girl’s purse. But that Saturday, I was awoken not by that,
Between Haram and Iniquity.
I mirror the entirety of myself in a pocket-sized gadget as counterfeit from foreign materials. These days, my flesh bleeds the odor of shortage, forged by the economist who reeks of poverty
Something thicker than blood.
Water and fire are said to be arch-enemies, the unresolvable dissension between them as profound and age-old as that between light and darkness. In the words of your grandmother, “You cannot…
In the Hollow of Grief.
It’s been seven years since night dispossessed me & claimed you as its own, your eyes remain forever bland, forever closed to dawn. At your grave, the earth opened its mouth widely…
Dancing on a Minefield.
They say God knows best, so they pass the pepper soup and turn the volume up. Laughter, loud and reckless, tumbles through the compound, bounces off the brown roof, spills into the streets,
Finding Halima.
The café was louder than usual, with the continued clicking of keyboards, the soft music looping under jumbled conversations, and the occasional hiss of the coffee machine.
Dear Grief.
Sometimes, the emotions are not always knife-sharp. Sometimes, we cannot point to the scarlet bite and say, this is where it hurts. Sometimes, the wound is just a wound. Dull. Lacking luster, lacking shine
Yellow Dress.
The soft tick-tick of the clock-thing is everywhere. It stopped when Mother went out with Father about two evenings ago, when the sun was a huge red cotton ball disappearing into the corner of the streets.
Ode to a Black Bo(d)y.
& here’s to you. & your kinsmen. Those who, having arrived the shores—half-naked; poured onto the sands. Spirits unbridled. Skins glistening with the wetness of the ocean within them.
These Walls.
I tell you, these walls knew about the war long before it broke out. It was revealed in a dream that Gowon had—a dream of cattle standing on their hind limbs, snatching whips from
Diglossia.
This was exactly how babel happened. god, watching how men desecrate the sky with filthy bodies, sweaty gums, unriddled courage. god, listening to the mouths…