I
I write to tell you that
the walls of my bones
are made of contention and
I am always situated between desires
that threaten to break
or mould me.
II
I write to tell you that
I am not the cartographer of memory
and that sometimes,
I forget my way home and
stumble into women who offer
to teach me the ways of water:
How to be soft,
how healing comes in waves,
how to open my body into the sea and
drown all the things that hurt.
III
I write to tell you that
my love is a nomad and
while wandering here in Ibadan
it fell into the hands of a woman
wearing your face.
IV
I write to tell you that
the second name for movement
is uncertainty.
V
I write to tell you about hope.
How it is a dream
where children grow into the belly
of a barren woman,
how she wakes in the morning
smelling of loss and longing.
VI
I write to tell you that
scars are a lot like borders.
How my body is a map filled with
dirt and death and
there is a sea in my eyes that takes
and takes and on moonless nights
how I ache and ache beneath my hills
and valleys and call all the names of
god painted on my tongue for the touch
of mother and fullness,
how my prayers come back to me
dressed in a void.
VII
I write to tell you that
while writing this,
language betrayed me and my mind
assumed the form of a tabula rasa.
VIII
I write to tell you that
silence is the name
for protest and prison.
