​
neighbor’s new fence
my roots
under his ground

​
signing my name
the loud detonation
of the old courthouse

Raised near thickets and forests, we were custodians of chirps, hisses, tweets and buzzes. We also were artists, experts at decorating bad days with iridescent smiles; days our hunts escaped with our baits, with our hooks, with our only traps, with our hopes of next supper. We were mathematicians: we solved hunger with sleep, knit our tendons with gulps of water and seeds of ọ̀súnsún plucked at the riverbank. We held the light of roses and matched it with rainbows, hoping to bathe in our infatuations with next-door friends. Alas, our feet only gathered dust, our lust in vain. We erupted into the mosque every now and then, where our lips exploded into litanies until our hearts dis-rusted into sanctity, accepted what the days kept bringing. Mother said if one's water was not enough for bathing, we should wipe only our faces with it. We were birds, searching for where to perch aright, lest we burden the brittle ground with our almost weightless selves.
 
harmattan over . . .
one by one, plants
take colour