The rustle in ’03

was kinder than tonight’s

Yet it pulled all the names of God

From my a mother’s throat

Begging it to let her son live again

That day, it was the little grief

That waited upon the wails of its fauthful

To become God.

My father didn’t live He became God.

To invent God,

All you need is a load of silence.

His name now bears punctuations

In between each damned syllables

A sigh first and then an angry moan.

Silence – Prefix

Suffix – Silence.

His name became silence

Something too heavy for our lips

To reclaim.

…

Ogunkoya Samuel is a Nigerian physiotherapist. His poems have been published and forthcoming in AfricanWriter, Kalahari Review,  Best New African Poets anthology 2017 and Barking sycamores. He writes from Ile-Ife.