We sat on a pile of firewood and watched the timid sun die behind the limbs of a palm tree – overlooking our shadows – leaning on our lean-to.
Our neighbour’s clock said time was six o’clock.
We rolled our eyes on the roads searching for my Mother among the homecoming feet. Mother whose neck is in goiter’s seizures. But it was Father who came back, after years drained in the skins of distant women. He buried barrage of our greetings in long silences. He came back with a brothel’s butterfly, through peeping we met them panting in and
out of their nudity.
Before he left, he said, “Your Mother is a room without music, without art, without nepa-light, without water…Her face is a fallen house with portraits
of ageless rust, emaciation and absences.”
We didn’t drum Father’s prodigalism into Mother’s ears when she came back with fever, but handed Her a Quit Notice Letter from our landlady who swore to
burn us out with Thugs or Mobs next week.
That night, Mother was a cloudy sky in a labour to rain. Thunder spoke in tongues in her heart. Her breath ascended, descended and then sliced the heart of night, before A multitude of clouds gathering in her eyes
established a dry river in our room.
BIO – Madu Chisom Kingdavid is a Nigerian writer, Poet and Football Analyst. His works have been published in online magazines, anthologies and national dailies. Mid-October 2016, he will be a graduate of history and international studies.
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