Figured I like writing poems like this now.

There Were Mouths in the Rain (for the remembering)

in the town where memory was currency,
we lived bankrupt lives
but paid in full anyway.

my sister remembered everything.
she once described our mother’s voice
as a room full of burning oranges—
sweet, screaming, and gone too fast.

the elders said:
“don’t plant memories in sand.”
but i buried whole years
beneath the market stalls,
underneath akara grease and gospel cassette tapes.
and yet—
the years came back,
dripping like rain off the tin roofs of my sleep.

//

i.

there were mouths in the rain.
we heard them after grandpa’s burial,
when the sky sobbed without shame.
they spoke in a dialect we’d forgotten
but somehow still understood.
they asked where we buried our gods.
we said: in our playlists. in our photo filters.
in the way we apologize for existing
before we even say hello.

that day,
my cousin wrote “sorrow” on his wrist with a biro
and jumped into the lagoon to rinse it off.
when he came back,
he said the water whispered his name
in all the accents he tried to lose in Canada.

we nodded.
we understood.
remembrance has a weight
you cannot carry on flights.

//

ii.

my lover and i kept a museum of almosts.
we made installations from unsent texts.
a glass case for the night we almost said forever.
a broken speaker playing that one voicemail
where you said my name like you meant it.

we remembered in pieces.
you’d recall the smell of my fear.
i’d recite the shape of your laugh
and get the geometry all wrong.
but we tried.
and that, maybe, was enough.

once, we fought about the past
as if it owed us rent.
as if we hadn’t already spent
every second of it
waiting for the pain to feel like art.

//

iii.

lagos doesn’t remember you.
but the potholes do.
they hold your footprints
like soft grudges.

the danfo conductor remembers your sigh
as payment for late fare.
the plantain seller remembers your face
only when you do not smile.
the sky, though—
the sky has amnesia.
it forgets you daily
but keeps the humidity
you left behind.

once, the moon blinked.
and i saw your shadow
in the glitch.

//

iv.

memory is a thief with soft hands.
it steals in whispers.
it takes your father’s voice
and leaves only the smell of his cigarettes.

it rewinds the moment
your mother said “don’t forget who you are”
until it loops into nonsense.
who. you. are. who. you. are. who.

you press rewind.
but find only static and
a child’s drawing of a house with no door.

you press stop.
and the silence
claps back.

//

v.

so i write these lines
like border declarations.
this poem—
a passport for grief.
a visa for remembrance.

i remember the shape of my rage.
i name it.
fold it.
put it under my pillow
like old prayer points.

maybe tomorrow,
i’ll wake up
and the past will be gone.
or louder.
or both.