Broken History

Our past is a rabbit that has lost its legs, a bird drowning in the pool of blood, scattered shirts 

on a field clinging onto the back of whirlwinds, and hanging in the hands of trees as flags. I 

came into this country through a broken door, a deserted home welcomed me in a smoke 

refreshment. Every body was coughing as if coughing was a song, a lullaby to pull me into 

the world. You can take it from me that this world is a gun, a bullet chasing after dreams. 

1964 is a tattoo drawn somewhere on my body and it still bleeds like a rubber tree bitten by a 

knife. I came to know my grandpa from the stains on a wall. It splits like dreams of a lazy man; every dot representing struggle for 

breath and stolen right. My mother pulls her tongue out and I see, that the only beautiful 

thing a soldier can do is to cut one's umbilical cord with a gun, to watch you bleed, and wait until 

your eyes grab the night- thick & dark enough that it can never be cut by light, be it a prayer. 

This is the reason each time I spray my dream on a floor like a mat before my mother, she recoils into a full stop. The truth is, 

she does not want a gun, a knife, grenade as a son. na person wey dey craze dey go war, na 

waiting e tell me. and every soldier is an awaiting war.