“A group of heavily armed men in trucks carried out an attack of mass murder, looting, arson and kidnapping against civilians in Auno.” — Wikipedia 

I do not like to pour dark ink on plain paper or paint life with a brush of gloom. My father told me to treat words like an uncooked egg, he said a priest does not prophecy tragedies.

I won’t

(But) only if you’ll teach me how to speak about peace when you live in a theatre of war.

How do you swallow blood and spit bloodless saliva when your mouth is a battlefield of tongue and teeth?

Auno is another name you’ll need to cram to keep a catalogue of insecurity– another open register in our museum of war.

Vehicles buried in tombs of ashes. Logs of lifeless bodies. Screams of AK 47. Beads of bomb around the waists of innocent girls. Bandits on motorbikes. Insurgency. Kidnapping. These are new imports in our social lexicon. New registers on the tongue of newscasters. The new make-up on the faces of national dailies.

Yesterday, I switched on the TV, and she read an account of how insurgents transited sleeping bodies beyond earth’s shores by the violence of guns at the dead of night in Auno – like she did last week.

And how the morning’s mouth hummed solemn hymns of sorrow and grief. We traced gutters of sticky blood towards the desert. We saw exposed bones underneath charred bodies. I went to the mall to ask how much a life costs.

These ones have become another stroke on the tally sheets of victims of failed promises, like

Fatima and Joshua, girls of Chibok & many more, whose names make headlines of wails in their homes.

Our cloudy eyes released fresh rain rolling on dried strands from yesterday. Our cheeks blushed with apprehension. We seek courage beneath our fluttering eyelids, no one knows who’s next.

Olaewe David Opeyemi is a Nigerian medical doctor and writer. He interrogates his life experiences through writing which he also sees as a veritable instrument for personal and social metamorphosis. His works has been published by Parousia, Eboquills, BPPC, Selcouth Station, CLH and elsewhere. He’s winner of Dawn of Splendour Poetry contest (Nov.2019) and Shuzia creative writing contest (Dec.2019). He writes from Birnin Kebbi, Northern Nigeria and active on Facebook @olaewedavidopeyemi and Instagram @opeolaewe.