They say the sea has no memory.
But I remember.
I remember you,
your hands soft with kindness,
your voice quiet like dusk settling over.
You were the best of us,
and now the sea has swallowed your name.

You left with thirty dreams wrapped in plastic bags,
thirty hopes folded into a fishing boat,
crammed between prayer and desperation.
They said Europe was light,
a place where the sky opens like a promise,
where a man can plant tomorrow in his chest
and not be afraid to breathe.

But the sea does not keep promises.
Only bodies.

Two crawled back from her belly—
a Somali brother, trembling, and a Hausa man
who lost his children to the tide.
He walks now like a ghost inside his own skin,
muttering names that once answered back.
His wife’s scarf washed ashore,
wrapped around a stone.

And you—
you, my brother—
you are wind now.
Dust.
Silence between phone rings,
the scream in Mama’s throat when she still hopes.

I watched her
boil water for a son who won’t come home,
fold clothes you’ll never wear again,
ask the moon if she’s seen you
floating, flying, anything but gone.

How many mothers weep into empty bowls?
How many names echo at borders, unanswered?
I knew a boy once—
a cousin of a cousin—
who walked out of Maiduguri
and vanished into Algeria like a shadow.
His mother still sets out two plates at dinner.

This continent bleeds its children.
And the sea collects them
like debts unpaid.

But I will not let your name drown.
I will speak it until the tide turns.
I will tattoo it into the sky with every word I know.
You were not illegal.
You were not disposable.
You were love in motion.
A dream dressed in skin.

And the sea has no right
to keep what we remember.

 

 

 

 

Photo by Camilo Contreras on Unsplash