Edwin Favour, Honorable mention for the 2024 Ogochukwu Ukwueze Prize for New Writers

My pride is a humbling jog,
I will walk away.
When my mother brandished an almost identical dupe
She called it regret
Said she forgot when to let go
From her father’s house to mine
It’s strung her along
But I call it survival.
This haughty need to self-preserve
She says I should not make the same mistake
Shouldn’t exchange pillows with a man who makes me forget what it means to dream
Said he locked her escape route with a padlock ring
Says she laid it all to sleep at the feet of this man I call my father
Never mind my brother.
It followed her everywhere
Made her a steady pouring of salt water
This Pride is my overflow drain
The conceited refusal to cave is my survival instinct
A necessary evil
like a post-modern interpretation of the Devil
The display of bad accentuates good
Like heaven and hell
A discreet juxtapositioning
So when I hear ‘Pride comes before a fall’
I think,
There’s going to be a deep crashing
And my pride is a mercy landing
I wear it on my shoulder, pad-high
And parachute into the sky🔆
Edwin Favour is an avid reader who can best be described as an enigma. She is an Editor for Akowdee Magazine, an online literary magazine that publishes creative fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and literary reviews. When she is not writing or reading, she listens to music.