You cannot tell Ghanaians that everything
cannot be turned into fufu.
So, now, rice is puff-puff,
rolled balls of mashed-up rice
for you to swallow
like you swallow pain,
like you swallow heartbreak,
the way life swallows the dead
under the ground.
Yesterday, they gave me another
need to swallow without chewing.
As if women do not already swallow
their pride to marry men
as their maternal clocks tick red,
so, babies our mothers birthed us to birth,
can be birthed before the mothers
are swallowed up by earth,
silt, emptiness,
the emptiness they carried for decades
in loveless marriages.
I swallow one scope of fufu rice, peanut soup
that looks like palm butter.
When the kitchen attendant returns
with my receipt, he wants to know
if I love the food. So, I prepare the smile
I will need to meet the Accra day.
How does a woman say thank you
for making her swallow another day?
Everything is a woman, I say.
Everything is a woman.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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