Of Boys In My Village, Poem by Adesina Ayobami Idris

Credit: James Clear blog

We’d start mornings on our chest
Planted to the floor of our father’s room,
Saying, amen. Saying, thank you,
As words slip the gate of his tongue.

Our mother is a fervent trader
So she’d walk in dew to the market
Before the cock woke us.

We’d sit, quietly waiting for the sound of omo oní múké.

We’d go to the stream to fetch in our gourd,
To swim, to play, to splash water on the mermaid’s garment.
We’d greet all the generations we walk past,
Smiling with the darkness in our teeth.

There is a girl we love who loves nobody—

We’d walk our way to her father’s chalet,
And mesh morphemes to become phrases,
And write words to her head in rhetorics,
Breaking in between sentences.

We’d say things like—
Àwèní, you’re as beautiful as the hills of western coast.

Her mother would see us and set her anger lose,
She would draw the sun and lightening to curse us in our small body.

We’d find our way out before we exchange glances with her father,
Yet, we will come back
With bigger words and faulty english.

We’d climb trees some owners forbid,
And pluck punishement,
We’d bury the punishment beneath our skin and come back the next day.

We’d kick cans and stones on our way home.
We’d get home and write our names on sand and walls,
For in my village, boys dream of their father’s house and every room in it.

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