Image by Biljana Jovanovic from Pixabay
LIZARDS
The lizards in this town Look like old men dried out from the sun Their heads nod the way their wives’ heads shook From the grief of being widowed By the hawks from the east Those creatures made of talons That never let go
Even when bodies fell out of their dried out skins
With each evening that came The women would troop over the bodies Of faces they couldn’t recognise Hugging baskets of grey earth to their sides. They would rub the dull red flesh of their husbands With earth that glowed like the moon in a cemetery The grooves where the talons had been Would crisscross the earth on their bodies
And harden in the sun to look like scales
For every toddler that stepped on a cement coloured lizard He would grieve at the memory Of a grandfather he had never known That’s the reason the children in this town Wear the dried out tails of grey lizards like wristbands To all of the funerals Of all of the people
Whose bodies had gotten lost in another land.
Akinmoju Busayo is a person that likes wonder and ideas and exploring them through story-telling and other forms of writing. She lives in Ondo and likes to read, listen to music and such.
- TAGS
- Akinmoju Busayo
- Poetry