she should be bigger than the framed photograph holding her she shoukd touch me by mouthing the name with which she blessed my umbilical cord until age 9, i always walked past the portrait nailed to the wall turned my eyes away from the strange woman built into the parlour until my brother's mouth started to foam with revelation truth laced with shock installed nightmares inside this body i merge eyes with the only surviving ornament, break into a flood dust plaits my mother's face neatly as i ignore the resemblance i climb up a stool & set her down for clearer examination i introduce her face to my chest, draw her close enough after school, i come home to intimate details of my day with her i do not think my words are licked clean by empty air i believe she hovers around my life fending off ghosts that she is God which picks my prayers & washes me anew that she soothes me with pretty stories till sleep takes control that i do not have trouble bringing her inside my dreams that she calls me son , & in so doing sets fire to the rain in my eyes i am a boy who pools his life inside the wish pond & retrieves his mother because i want to feel her breath's warmth pressed against my neck because i want her scolding to tighten up childlike screwups i rise to the rank of a ladder & replace her body on the wall nailed once more as inglorious personal saviour to go unnoticed this sour moment empowers a floor of tears to overrun my eyes & i spill over the carpet sweeping emotion across the room mother's absence visits in the grief of dreary weathers i make the hurt fitting by choosing to unbreak my life the bandage of this thought will heal the wound, prominent like my name
Michael Akuchie is an emerging poet from Nigeria. His work has appeared on 8poems, Kissing Dynamite, TERSE, Nitrogen House, Burning House and elsewhere. He is on Twitter as @Michael_Akuchie. He studies English at the University of Benin, Nigeria.
