In my dream there are junipers, black ants,
shovels & mattresses.
My dead bury themselves with their limbs
facing a slew of stars.
I step out into the perfectly bronzed street
& I see a crane prancing
in the prairie. Rusted chains dangling down
like rotten wisterias
crawling into the mauve of high glass walls.
The sky living up to
its prophetic beauty, such esoteric whisper
of a woman with
ghostly desires. I hear in that creak & groan
of the old building, the
red piano lending its body to my father. The
hymn like deserts
stretching before us. A rustic wailing in the
small colonised room—
Nights like these, I & my brother would drink
coffee in quaint cafés
& wait for the fire of the music to die quietly
in us. We gathered boxes
of moringas under our beds & made our room
an aromatic nest.
The blowing. The inhaling. The tomb of the
air is broken open
& those whom we have lost revisit us. They
come when the sun
grows bored & the light now tenders our skin.
Over the fence, we
watch children go for slippery walks on a wet
field. Glee bodies hitting
the earth over & over again like soft light spread
over everything.
The children fade & disappear. A firm wet thumb
erasing them from the
surface of all things. Leaving the murk upon the
surface. Holidays in
Lagos got me like this. The nature of terror & the
language of home
thickens my eyes like ganglia clustering of the
nerve. I have been clocked out
so long, my emptiness stretches towards home.