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We’ve gradually fallen into the habit of patching things up, Mother and I. Like nodding our heads as we cross paths in the house or mending the bucket I had broken while taking water from the kitchen on the day Ezinne left – a stone occasioned my misstep. A bad omen.

Still, Mother comes around with grief now and again.

Some days she comes into my room, sits on the far end of the bed and stares into space. When she sighs with that strain, her breath heavy and echoing in my head, her lips quaking as though in search of words, I know grief is there. On days like these, I stop writing and stare out the window.

I listen to the sounds she makes, the whimper and nose-wrinkling that follows at intervals and I offer my silence as we both stare into space. It’s an unusual state where our eyes avoid meeting each other. When she leaves, I write about those eyelids heavy with fluid I cannot get a glimpse of.

Today she comes in carrying a fish so frail and the salt shaker. She mutters something about not trusting the country and empties the salt into the fish. My teacher in catering school thinks salt is bad for the sauce. But mother doesn’t trust her country.

Today, my eyes stay glued to the paper. I don’t look out the window for escape. My hands write furiously on the paper.


Chukwudalu Abugu is the author of the poetry chapbook, I Tried To Spell You In Clouds And Their Waters. She has her works published in the Society of Young Nigerian Writers (SYNW) 2020 Rape Anthology, NSPP 2021 Anthology, and was a joint winner of PIN 10-Day Poetry Challenge, May 2020. Chukwudalu spends her leisure seeing cartoons, volunteering, jogging, sleeping, and listening to her voice.