There are always holes in the blessing
we fail to account for.

In that warm harmattan, my grandma paid the pallbearers
one thousand five naira to change

the zinc roof. All through the rainy season,
The roof leaked. We collected the water with little bowls

from the kitchen. Nothing is promised—
not even the advent of another flood. God is present,

so is his history. In my diary, I put two brackets across
the word grief. A coat to keep it warm.

In the dream, I dig the dirt where a dog just fetched
a rabbit. I dig not for meat, but for the fur

of something alive. The world wasn’t ending
but I was alone with myself, in myself, outside myself.

I was a boy. I was a blue stream, I was a bird
with a scar on its beak.

In that harmattan, my grandfather went to bed, a man.
The next day, he woke up on the edge of the river

where the dead wait for the living.
I did not cry. But I learned that tears too had legs.

Eyes have history.
Years later, my grandma stood on the edge of that same river.

Not breathing, not singing, not even calling my name.
Which means I cried & the river swallowed my tears.

Which means I cried & my eyes gave away their own history.

I am sitting on a porch in a small town in America.

The grapes are ripe.
I have a kitchen knife & a hunger that sharpens itself.  

In my mind, the skeletons of the past are restless.
I have no tune. I have exhausted my lullabies.