The wounds I’ve healed from do not keep me up at night – I have a scar on my knees.
— Samuel Adeyemi
My father in his morning rituals
left his knees on the naked
pulpit in his silent bedroom.
That is to say — his knees on the bedroom
are scars in a museum:
that wear the skin of a cracked rainbow
collecting pain, sadness, and grief.
In this poem, my father is a full-black-boy
clothing himself with mutilated memories
of yesteryears. Maybe, that is why I cannot decipher him
from the boy in my dream last night. The boy
whispered “My heart is an indigo of sadness” & each
time I closed my eyes to pray — I espy another
whimpering in me with sullen photographs like last
Saturday’s rainfall. Again, today, my body will become a
little garden where words will grow into a sad banana
plant. & God knows I am the joining letters of
sadness & soon I’ll reteach my tongue how to
remember a boy in his mother’s dialect. But how much
clothes are enough to cover a scar?
I mean the dinosaurs on my body — perhaps I doubt
miracles & magic too & sometimes I wonder if God too,
doesn’t doubt my strength.
Anderson Moses (he, him, his) is a poet from a small village in Akwa Ibom state, Nigeria. He is currently a student of History and International Studies, University of Uyo. Apart from writing poetry he enjoys snapping images.
