REFLECTION II BY JOSHUA AIRE

REFLECTIONS II
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There is something my father told me about water:
He said it is a mirror where we see diverse reflections, – I see
myself sometimes through the flames billowing from his pipes
with residues of ashes on his fingers – I see a city whose name
I can’t utter unless I see the letters falling from my mouth like
leaves reciting the poems of gravity.
.
This city is a silent night:
The other day, I dipped my fingers into the sky and I watched
how the clouds squirt the juicy flames of our burnt men, who
sank 6ft beneath their boots when they danced with
fireflies in the ballroom of Bornu; I saw how the night tore itself
into shades of gray as the dark began to filter its hues into tints of shades.
The flames of the men found home in our eyelids when they
became insomnia - an antidote to blood-stained lullabies.
.
I watched the other day when my shadow stared at me
with tears in its eyes, we both held our hands at the river till
it faded into the walls of the water, I saw how the hues of
sunset blushed its face as the ripples began to dance from its
silhouette into the spaces in my jeans, I felt the wet ashes of this
same men on my fingers. I licked it and tasted a broken city.
.
This city is the image I see when I look through the rippled waters,
I see how it dances to the rhythm of the waves as the ripples
guide it into a forgotten queue. I saw how the tears strolling down the
faces of nursing mothers crawled back into their eyes through the
steeped wrinkles for here is not a place for them to set their feet.
.
This city is a pillage of broken things, broken dreams and broken
rivers. I still saw how the children on the streets of Maiduguri
walked through the valley of the shadow of death into the mouths
of carrion. All we have are songs of freedom trapped in the prisons
of our mouths with silence shouting into our ears
with the wails of our heroes past.
.
This city is like a mirage – a testament of a lost chronicle.
.
Joshua O. Aire