*Second Runner-up for the O.A. Ejesu Poetry Prize with The Muse no. 48 Journal
I must call you desperate.
Breasts heaving, touches that swelter
& ask too much of a half-baked soul.
I am only one of them, reduce your voice
I am agape, drink. Lightly.
This is the way a mother bleeds,
calling to all things still−“there, carry.
My yoke is not light, but carry”− weighing
a thousand breaths, punctuated wholes,
us, skeletal & healing to return again.
You must not splay your distended womb, its
lolling names & suns & women
rasping to be remembered, you must
not need so percussively.
We will come and taste, be dismembered,
sent to look for our names, return again.

Paula Willie-Okafor is a student in the University of Nigeria, Nsukka. She is an ardent lover of fiction, superhero comics, cheesy medical dramas and pastry. She is the current Custodian of The Writer’s Community at Nsukka and hopes to be a teacher soon.