To celebrate Women’s History Month, Enkare Review has been sharing profiles of phenomenal women writers on our social media pages here, here and here. We are going to share these profiles on our website as well. This is the first part of a four-part series.
Becoming
Your freedom
Will not come suddenly
But in bouts of doubts
In whispers of held back truths.
Like any other morning, Zinu awoke from a sleep alive with colour. In his dreams he was in the classroom, seated at the front desk. The vague murmurs of the other children floated around him, but his eyes were trained on the shiny Bata shoes twinkling up at him. His gaze trailed up the black trouser legs of the man who wore the shoes like he had been born in them. The man turned and pointed a stick at something on the blackboard.
A River Of Honey
This love is an Enugu themed
story of survival;
of weeds growing
through cracks in concrete pavements.
Its words are melodies
and its voice is a crushed
song.
For in bars
painted the silent colours
of cobalt blue,
it crouches in corners blowing smoke,
trying to quench fires.
This love is a river of
honey filled with thorns,
filled with picture frames of men
burning in a sea of rubber,
men embalmed in blood
from the marrow of their own bones;
those that held it in the dark
and twisted it till
their souls snapped
and ice poured from the
hollow sockets of their eyes.
This love is a man
filled with keyless symphonies,
engorged with the cheers of mobs
as they watch him burn
in front of his mother.
This love is a boy
crying on the bank of
a running river,
all his life.