Who was it that took away my voice?
The black wound he left in my throat
can’t even cry.
Hwɛ sɛ Pra ɛtutu kɔɔbre—
her once-clear body now dressed
in dirty-brown kente ngusuo.
The Ashanti Hemaa is crying again,
retwa adwadwoɔ—
she remembers Katamanso, 1826.
Except this time
she is not in Densinkran
mourning Osei Tutu I
or fallen warriors.
She is mourning herself.
Barefoot.
Standing on business—
as when she once became the border
between Ashanti breath
and British appetite.
But today her banks are naked:
mud on her lips,
mercury in her mouth,
fury settling in her eyes.
What can be sadder
than water without sound?
Once, she answered
when we called her—
tasted of mornings,
held the clean logic of thirst.
Now mother boils her longer,
as if time can filter greed,
as if fire can argue with mercury.
Somewhere upstream,
money is changing hands.
Downstream,
a father drinks away his offspring—
we will never father children.
They tell us the land must suffer
for survival.
But whose survival requires
the slow murder of a river?
Who keeps preaching
The Beautiful Ones Are Not Yet Born
when our mothers still deliver
stillbirths and fatal deformities?
She has learned to choke quietly,
learned to miscarry—
fish floating belly-up
like unanswered prayers.
She once baptized us.
Now she stains.
So tell me—
when you finish eating the future,
what will you drink?
Scott Frost
Scott Frost is a Ghanaian poet/writer and Biomedical Sciences student whose work explores identity, memory, love, death, and hope, drawing from Ghanaian oral traditions and lived experience. He was the first runner-up in the New Voices Poetry Contest 2025. His work has been exhibited at the e-Ananse Library in Ghana and archived in the Museum of African Poetry. His poetry has appeared in Hummingbird Journal, Numen of Story, Creative Project Ghana, NENTA Journal and Ta Adesa, and is forthcoming in Rowayat, LIT eZINE Magazine, Drawn to the Light Press, the International Anthology of Lost Souls Ltd, and elsewhere. Scott is on Instagram: @iamjoe._._ and @_.scottfrost.
