One who wears darkness as cloth
mother is fishing for light in the murky waters of her
body she plucks stars from the sky & hides them
behind her eyes, slices part of the moon & keeps it
under her threadbare wrapper. even if she does have
light, she mustn’t show it because father is
photophobic, very sensitive to light, & she is
unworthy- light is for humans, she is not one.
mother is a owl in the night that is her life, lone &
tired. look, in father’s eyes, every time his hand
raises to weave her body into a basket full of dead
things what lies there, feral, is an expectation, an
eagerness to uncover hidden things shrouded in light,
paradoxical in nature. happiness is sour on mother’s
palate & peace is the foreign subject of a cold, distant
god, & speaking the language of love is a trick her
tongue has not mastered, yet others wonder why she
hates sugar & watermelons. see, mother is a strange
woman: her body has made love with pain & now
carries its babies. the name in her birth certificate is
pain written in dust & outlined with tears. gouge her
eyes out if you doubt this & hand them each a
microphone, tell them to sing all the songs they know.
it’ll be onions & smoke, I promise.
Sanni Omodolapo is a Nigerian writer, who is fascinated by the uncanny things language—if well engineered—is capable of. He writes poetry and prose. His works have been published/are forthcoming in Giallo, Ngiga Review, Agbowo, and The African Writers Review. He is openly in love with Teju Cole.
Banner: Dancer, a digital collage by Robert Frede Kenter Tweets: (2) RobertFredeKenter (@frede_kenter) / Twitter
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