My grandmother holds a rattan whip against her tears,
hurtling them back into the well of her throat. She stitches
prayers into my name, wears me
on her tongue like a relic
of leniency. Abdul-lahi—
each syllable a shackle, each

prayer a stone in my pocket. Do not forget to always tent
your hands to Him for grace. forgiveness. I nod, throat thick
with unspilled rain. But the only thing I disremember is my
hometown. Because a boy cannot chew joy
without choking on home’s gunpowder grit.
Befriend me — if I will not snipe you
at your legs. Embrace me — if I will not sprinkle your skin with
your gash salt.
Home’s gunpowder stains my teeth. What else
does my grandmother know about me, if not the sadness of leaving

home? But I have diplomas in faking tears; I hide my euphoria well
beneath my face. Before this time, I ogled my grandfather on a bed

where illness thrust a scalpel into his body, & before he wilted into
hyacinth-scented dust, his hand clasped mine — a root gnarled around
a sapling — Ilé làbọ̀ simi oko, he said.
Home is the rest after the farm.

But what rest when home is the farm? What did a little boy, learning
to carry his mother’s language on his tongue, like me, know? When
my body bloats with sweat,
mosquitoes needle my skin—
their proboscises plowing furrows,
sowing malaria like rice grains.
A girl asks where I’m from, & my tongue curls like a leaf in drought,
but she caught me through my slipping tongue. You, dear, do not
forget home & her language. When emptiness begins growing

in my stomach, I remember that my grandparents’ words are indeed

divine. Now, if I tell you I’ve found a way
to call my hometown home—

know this: my tongue, a fossil of my grandmother’s prayers, my heart,
a grenade with the pin half-pulled — a boy caught between detonation
& the silence of home.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Johnny Cohen on Unsplash