There are ways our mouths get broken of words that one time

Had fixed our throats as to how it looks like when a boy larns,

To extract half of a moon to feed his bedeviled mother;

Who had once basked in the full phase of the same moon.

 

In our land, we have no paper boat to ferry grief, 

So we make way for it to vagabond itself,

Through a voyage devoid of a finish line;

On the sail that ramps on our skin.

 

How it pictures when hope is sucked dry,

From the pendulum breast of a brain.

How a bone gets too thin to reject joy!

Or how our sagging lips never failed us,

The way they can narrate those days;

The earth got hot and miscarried dreams.

 

But we are in between, not been sung a dirge yet, 

Living on veins like the bird

That rises in the morning to hunt many nothings. 

 

And each time our bellies crumble, 

It tells us of a song;

Of grief being made a chameleon that slips on every shining shade.

Of a song we don as the sky wears blue, 

And as a beggar on the highway says with precious rags, 

Singing, “We are hun…hun…, Oh, we are hungry!”

 

Fatihah Quadri Eniola is a Nigerian poet, creative writer, and a literary critic who hold a strong feeling of adoration for art. She lives with her happy parent in Ibadan, Oyo state in Nigeria.

Fatihah is a member of HCAF (Hilltop creative arts foundation), Nibstears poetry cave, B.G.T( Black girl’s tales) and a pressman. Her works have appeared or forthcoming in Beatnik Cowboy, World Voices magazine, Notion press, De Curated and Syncronized Chaos.

Fatihah loves cinematography, you can find her on IG “Fatihah Quadri”