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My House Is not a Home
“When you get
to your mother
tell her how long
it took you
to find home”.
– Pilgrimage
By Adedayo Adeyemi Agarau
I carry my father’s name around
As I bear another man’s portrait.
The truth is a stranger, it only
Breaks from anger.
I’m five times my mother’s prayer request
Than an answer.
That is to say, God heard her words constellations
As a crack record of my favorite playlist.
Treat me like we sprout from the same pods
Light does not ghost in darkness.
I can only get what I deserve.
You see, words too can shape shift a baby
Into a nineteen-year-old boy embittered with grief.
Till every joint in his body becomes a juncture of broken things – Father and happiness and heart and thoughts.
Sometimes no matter how hard we try, we can never find a home.
Because home is another word for grief full of broken people things.
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Many evenings pass
Yet today stands still.
I find my trails homeward
Waiting for the moon to return
Even for fireflies to resume
With little lights that ignite
The memories of you, daffodil.
Tell me,
What colour petals you now,
Seeing that nothing withers away at heaven’s gate?
In this poem, I see you
But like a mirage
You dissipate each time I run towards the warmth of your body.
I’ve learnt to solo the funeral songs
But this time, I’m soloing for a dead
Relationship.
I won’t be saying goodbye
Seeing it is for the eyes –
For close things that never see each other.
Wisdom Is a Shade of Grief
Ecclesiastes 1:18 – “For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.”
The priest invokes a constellation of words from his palate and tags it a prayer for wisdom.
I shape my hand into a shield to avoid the shrapnel that accompanies it,
from finding home in this body. Say wisdom can be grief if the tongue falters.
And my tongue shivers like a cracked record. Say a step towards wisdom are countless cuts at the heart of happiness.
Say I embody grief
But shouldn’t afflictions not rise a second time?
How then do I wake again at the foot of sorrow each time I seek wisdom?
Raymond Favour is a young poet from Ito, Ika local government area, Akwa Ibom State, Nigeria. His work has appeared on eboquills, synchronized chaos, the daily pointers review, spillword and are forthcoming elsewhere.
