Have you seen the news?
someone asks me,
as if the body can keep gathering
this much heaviness
and still remember
how to stand.
This morning the sky broke open
before the sun did
a kind of warning,
the quiet kind,
the kind we pretend
is just weather.
In Kogi, a woman rearranges her hope
like furniture
moving it from place to place,
trying to find a spot
where it won’t trip her in the dark.
In Jos, a boy ties the day to his wrist
like a cheap wristwatch,
hoping it won’t stop
before he gets home.
Someone says the economy is “plummeting,”
as if we haven’t felt the ground
shake beneath our lives
for months now.
As if hunger isn’t learning
everyone’s name
too quickly.
Have you seen the news?
they repeat,
but I have
in the way the market woman
counts the tomatoes twice,
not to cheat you,
but to convince herself
there is still enough.
I see it in the bus conductor
who jokes louder these days,
laughing like a man
trying to pull sunlight
out of thin air.
And I see it in myself
the way my prayers have become
half-pleas,
half-bargains,
the way I hold my breath
before opening my phone,
as though the headlines
might swallow me whole.
Still
there is a child down the street
chasing a plastic bottle
as if it were a miracle,
and somehow,
somehow,
it is.
Maybe that is the real news:
that we keep finding small ways
to stay alive
in a country that keeps testing
our definition of it.
So I tell them,
yes, I’ve seen the news
but I’ve also seen the people,
and sometimes
that is the only reason
I still believe
In tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by sammy swae on Unsplash