three sixty-five days ago – was when death sneaked into our home
and wrapped a towel around your knee, dragging you far into a night that ceased to become day.
the night you were christened by death, i mean the night you turned an undertaker’s item stuffed down the belly of the earth
you became a new name stashed in history. the air reeked of the aura of tongues sore with grieving songs.
when i say coated paper now holds your presence at home, i mean the photograph of you are everywhere. alone. in a suit frame in the living room,
full taped on our wall which wears the colour of the earth that gulped you down its throat like wine out of a bottle into its brown body.
some time ago, perhaps before or after you journeyed to the sky, i mean the night death willed you to God
you munched softly on the morsels of Àmàlà as though you were afraid to swallow. you wobbled gently on the Àgbàntárá
it belched a creaking sound that attested to its weakness, with eyes that appeared retreating to their caves, you beckoned to me and told me about death –
how you thought it to be a dilated fence of dread – and how you saw it as a rough, rugged sea you’d never have the prowess to sail across.
the night threnodies tossed our lullabies onto thorns. i mean the black, blank night death tightened his fangs around your body,
before the men washed you over and over. before mother’s body snapped like a weakened tree branch & before father sowed you beneath the infertility of the soil
you raised alarms of seeing death shimmering at you at the doorstep. i was by your side on the cold, concrete floor – one hand caressing your hair follicles
the other interlocked with yours – when death worked his fingers into the knot muscles against your spine;
the news of your death fell into my ears like pins into tranquil water.
yesterday was when i passed by your grave, i still feel your unsettling presence, but i do not possess the eyes of a dog to see your gentle spirit
and so i cursed ikú, and the doctor that pronounced you dead & the Kèké that conveyed your body and the earth you were tucked into – the earth that interlocked my view.
i wrote this poem when i heard a poet say, “We are mere characters entertaining God.”
then i wonder whether God was watching when death swooped down and carried you off;
gliding away with you grasped in hooked claws – into his wilderness.
so, take this poem God, as yet another drama. i hope you get entertained.
