When this is over,
we’ll be enmeshed in a battle for names,
a clamour to be known
to be called something.
Every one of us will want to be seen on TV,
sandbagged into ashy headlines:
Sixty Blacks, now whitewashed.
And when our kids ask us to tell them
where our identities are buried, our throat cells will fold
into extinction.
How do you describe the anatomy of loss to a child?
This sacred space where our cultures are stored
before decaying into stuffy libraries, do you call it a tomb?
And this compressed mass of white tongues
filtering into our souls, do you call it the future?
We’ll have to borrow fancy words like
“colonization” and “white supremacy” to soften the thud of a continent
falling into oblivion.
And when they ask if it’s okay to dream, to hope,
we’ll show them our scars,
and we’ll say:
scars are remnants of dreams.
Read – Be There, Be Present – Bassey Augustina (Nigeria)
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