Across the horizon a small colony of birds
Are singing through the silence of the evening breeze.
Peach light of the the setting sun is tenderly
Touching the edges of our skin, I’m no more a woman
Other than a void of everything I have touched.
My voice is put in place for the vowels to command,
As though language is a delicate delight
In the music of presence, and absence is how
We know something was once full of light.
The night is coming into me like a song,
Now I know how it feels to be touched by grace,
My mother, and all her sisters are seated on
In the comfort of a lightly warm room,
Whose voice is it when I sing of glory,
Whose fault is it when loneliness becomes
A constitution in the parliament of broken things.
My mother and her sisters are holding hands
Distance away from where I sway,
There’s no mirror here so I forget who I am,
My mother is a woman who knew all the things
A man could do, my mother was smoke in the
Silence of the diasporas: a map through
The history of beautiful things. When she opens
Her mouth, her teeth are brightly coloured
Carnations charging into the expanse of quiet fields.
Aisha A. Bolaji
Aisha A. Bolaji is a Nigerian poet and wordsmith who has been a literary enthusiast since childhood. She has just completed her first collection of poetry, but has been writing and performing for almost a decade. She loves nature and is often inspired by it. Her poems explore a wide variety of topics, but majorly focuses on the struggles of the African woman in today’s world.
