i am at home      

i tweet about how my country flows

with milk & honey        mama sits by the window   

knitting cardigans for my unborn brothers —

the colours of hydrangeas blooming in our garden

father sings along to the national anthem

playing on the radio

                                     with love & strength & faith

we are at home

                                     & there is

no bazooka metamorphosizing a home

into an idp camp         no country       b  l  e  e  d  i  n  g

from every pore          staining the soil              the flag

the faces           of citizens who sit at the Lekki tollgate

clamouring for peace               pouring pleas into pleas

into leaky ears            no mother packing             un-

packing her dead children’s kindergraphs         no

lichyard festooned with flaccid flowers          no father

chanting requiems as antiphons to the national anthem

please     don’t     wake     me       from     this     dream

because here    we are at home     smiling      breathing

                                                      & living

              in our portable paradise where flowers bloom

with light & love.

Sodïq Oyèkànmí is a poet from West Africa. He enjoys writing poetry as he sees this as a therapeutic creative outlet. He co-judged the AKUKO Inaugural Literary Competition [Poetry Category] alongside Rosed Serrano. A Best of the Net nominee with works published in Poetry Wales, Pigeonholes, trampset, Olney Magazine, African Writer Magazine, Brittle Paper,  Kalahari Review, and elsewhere. A wildflower who tweets @sodiqoyekan