image source: google images
Baami the day you left/ & your shadow fleeted
in smokes/ & home became a painting of chernobyl /
And left us as pawns to memory/ as ghosts
To our respectively broken flesh/ the sky didn’t fall/
But your face fell off mine/ like passengers
at the tarmac/ your name became alien & charred/
But too hard/ a code to unstore/ And it haunted us/
In sleep & everywhere/ with strange Tongue/
And whips/ But we took ritual in forms/
To renounce the hexes you left/ behind as verbs/
That day you left Baami/ we bought rose
in memory/ of our eschewing father/
And gifted the wilted/ remains to the bin.
About the author
Olúwapèlúmi Francis Sàlàkó writes from North Central, Nigeria. His writings aim to interrogate the place of memory, loss & love, society & stereotypes, culture, history, time and space. His writings have appeared or are forthcoming in Dwarts, Tuckmagazine, Prachya review, the rising phoenix review, elsewhere.
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