After the sleep of the hibiscus, the world opens its hands to sunshine – Romeo Oriogun
In the house where the children now paint white with the consistency of joy, the soil sits, a dark statue ready to taste the splash of the sun. The hut tells the smell of firewood, carrying our faces to the escaping smoke of morning; this is how we know the start of day from the pain of night, after the long rest of lightning. On the field, the breeze starts with spreading the women’s hair into a wing opening in mist. A woman plants into the dark armpit of earth, she dances to the cutlass, to the last crow of a young rooster, to the children picking the hairs of a palm tree. She dances to dayspring. Even a boy have stood before a storm & not die of water. Here, we sit with the voices of hoes, listening to the hiding sound of animals. Here, grief is a lame foreigner. Mother is not dead. Mother is pounding the village inside her pot. Even in dreams, we have seen men, old men in the eyes of birds, & watched the river spread her large legs into the field. We have learnt enough fortune that the dead now dance to the beats in our hearts.
is a young African poet. She is currently a member of HCAF (Hilltop creative arts foundation), Black Girls’ Tales and Nibstears Poetry Cave. Her works have been published or are forthcoming in Ice flow, The Kalahari Review, Blue Minaret, Rigorous mag and other literary journals, she is nyctophobic and lives with a very cute cat, Honiy.
