Photo credit: Brian Holsclaw via Flickr.

 

Your body is the last house left in a ghost town
whose inhabitants took their good time
to practise their segue, make their departure thorough, and sound
like a tribute to reluctance

they stayed the years it took to exorcise the idea of a revenant
and scrub clean memory off your walls
all what’s left is space for tourists to speculate how who were in you were

your brother’s grandson, who loves himself to be called uncle
marvels at how your parts have connived not to give altogether
like children kind enough to share an unfamiliar sophistication
like cotton candy in Bana

you take guests well
and know how to play remain-propped-on-borrowed-strength and
smoothen-your-wrinkles-with-oedema-water
for those who stay three days to see if you’d rise again
and when they leave, and their beds are folded
you continue your falling apart

today, it was your mouth naming
some undecided stroke
in the creation of a new character
I don’t think my heart can learn to write

 

 

About the Writer:

Nana Yaa A. Asante-Darko is a Ghanaian writer. She is a freelance academic and she loves food. Her stories and poems have been published by Afridiaspora and the Aké Review (under the name Sika Bosuo Mokuor), Siro360 and the Girdblog. She is the winner of the CEGENSA Ama Ata Aidoo Short Story Competition.