Mémoire
In the absence of full skies
Ten years
I’d say it feels like it was just yesterday but that would be false.
The sound of your voice is lost to me.
These days I can only imagine.
Dreams give me feint memories of your laugh.
One portrait hanging on my wall to remind me of what you look like.
She told me stories.
How you fought that night to protect the ones you cared for.
How you fought as I ran.
Sometimes I still get angry and tell no one why
The voices say to me “It is not your fault, sometimes the devil gets what he wants”
I have never met the devil.
I did not see him that night.
Instead, I saw men, blacker than shadows
Eyes as red as fresh claret, one could drink from their tears
It was three of us out in the open.
I remember looking up to see neither the moon nor the stars.
I remember thinking to myself “ God is not here”.
If one listened close enough, one could hear two pacing heartbeats.
My brother’s was faster but mine was louder.
However, no sound came from within the man in front of us.
He was empty inside. As loud as our hearts were beating, the silence within him was the loudest.
My ears hurt from it’s shout for hunger.
The silence that took the soul of men and turned them into wild dogs.
And yet, while others had been consumed from hair tip to toe nail,
this one had managed to hold on to what was the last branch sticking out of the cliff we call humanity.
This one shut his eyes.
The branch had started to break. It was his last battle. His last act as a rational being.
I took brother and ran before he fell off.
I looked back expecting to see what I had presumed would be a behemoth but all I saw was an empty space of darkness.
“God is not here and neither is the devil”
I remember hiding under concrete till there was light outside.
I remember our home looking like the old ruins you find in ancient Greece.
I remember the smell of what I later discovered was your blood everywhere.
I remember mother explaining to us in the simplest of terms the never ending journey you had embarked on.
I remember never crying when I poured sand on the bed they made for you to sleep in because it was to painful to.
I remember not going to sleep at night and always checking your bedroom to see if you had come back and hoping it was all a joke.
Furthermore, I remember when mother told us that you had finally come back but you couldn’t speak or walk.
All you could do was laugh and cry.
And though you were a child again, and I had to call you little brother now, I knew It was you.
Lastly I remember thinking to myself, “Finally God is here”
(2016)
In Memory of my father Chief Osondu Okoye, May his soul be at peace
