Our ancestral home would not forget your perfection. On this ground shall we plant your names also for those who are to come. We will gather firewood, we will gather soothsayers, we will gather seekers of fate to get into you. Life is meant to be spent in joy. Having Nkporo on your lips is a grace not an illusion. That ancient city carries expections and treasures which shall be yours when tomorrow comes. We are being mailed into extinction, like glossy Victorian postage stamps abandoned in the house of symbols. Although, it is a warm bright glimmer to hold water together into a firm shadow housing a weeping spiritual boys over a loved ones.
So, no child will come outside to play to his glory. So no child would be blinded by the light of the dying lamps. And no child shall be the gutters where imperfections are completely blocked, by broken hopes, shards of flesh and transgressions. If you stand to move this morning into the hand of mortals, our ancestral legs would shout of hallaluya made in the open space.
Last night, thousands of souls crossed the shore of our mind to a place where finding rivers is a shadow itself. When morning came, they crossed again to a place where Nkporo was written with a green ink. To find your way home is to find another wailing shadow in the doorpost. To find another family is like holding an innocent baby boy to arms and direct him to a place he can burn his skin to ashes and to teach him that he never saw the past pointing an accusation fingers on him. The mourners are home again but this time, not on the surface of Nkporo because our parents were speechless when the first mourners came. They were quiet when the thrills and waves of the rivers turned sobs and mourns. Tonight, we will buried out souls into tenses and valued perfections. We would announce Nkporo to the world without guilt that penetrate into skins. We will make Nkporo your names and numbers and letters holding the foundation of the world.
The Eagles played against the voiceless duck before the moon peeped through the eyes of the boys in the night. Tomorrow, we will allow the goats to go the forest to find the lions. we forget our chaos too easily. We forget our way too much . We don’t try to build this fence over the camp of the enemies because dead bodies are now constants on our eyeshadow.. Gory seen here, sorrow carved preciously, they are the figurine and the flames that stream down from heaven into our souls. No one understands the pains, how it started and how it will end. Sometimes, we need to forget each other to know how important we were to each other when we reconnect. Sometimes, we leave to live again and the other times, we file up like pile of clothes to trace the beginning of our misfortunes.
I will not talk of the decline in population and the failure of our economy to treat us right because my strong father is no more. He died having the thought that our roads will be constructed so that he could tell his father but, it wasn’t. I will not even speak evil of this land because of my unborn children. This is their land. Although femished this time but they would know how to harvest their own tomorrow. Our old men accepted a lucky strike, and kicked the bucket just last month. The survivals are still at home nursing their lyprocy. Try to know yourself before you leave your tongue wagging of goodness.
Down in the edge of my soul, I descended into very thin silver and lining gold, my hearts the shore of many offspring of Nkporo. For this barbarians lurking within would just disappear and reshapen himself to make us laugh again.
The only smile we have left, is in our childhood bundled between our chins, stocked inside a photo from the very first day we were born.
For; we have lost all that made us happy when the sun was always sunny and blazing warm, for it was always midnight in our searching eyes.
Hold onto your bearing. Be the best you can be with this letters. It always the same beginning in the same way, the earth trembled to the motion of our forefathers having our last smile.
And then, a silent scream echoed from parts lost to fear and fury and anger and anxieties into faraway cities and those nearby are the only tongue of rain in our palms. Don’t cry more for what happened in Benue, pleateu and Kogi and Enugu. Don’t cry more than your eyes can carry but hold yourself in unity to guide this land
where the music of love coming from these energies you must reserve for a time shall come when you would need them. Resentment or something else may be our fear but then, we follow the wind for protection till the cock crows again.
In spite of everything in your hands. Clean up yourselves and make meal of your dark sides for holding on is the passport to be who you are meant to be. I am trying and begging to be me. I am working to love more than I have loved before. I am learning to create a new me but boys, I will make this new clothes for you to wear and preotect yourselves. Sometimes, forget each other to reconnect in a better way. And in that moment bullets and axes and machetes would be laid afar off because the bound would be ticker than it was before. As families journey to dimensions unknown, not alone but unaccompanied by our forebearers, we would have boys gathered in their own honour.
Tomorrow, the news would spread out around the world on every screen and faces that love is seen among you boys. Wait here for I will write more to encourage you to keep keeping on till this land forget to remember how to kill each other.
by John Chizoba Vincent
