black woman

HYDROLOGY

by Chiwenite Onyekwelu

Hydrology – Winner of the 2020 Kreative Diadem Annual Creative Writing Contest (Poetry Category)

You were my first undoing. You 

       whom I met at the shorelines of my life.

In the sizzling of oatmeal too close 

      to ruins      the television bright eyed on 

Saturday nights     & the crisp chattering 

      of Ludo seeds, I took care to hold you at 

an aunty’s distance. How come you 

      blurred the lines & met me unguarded.

I wanted to be a child that very night: 

       soft & fragile & yet untouched.

But you held me in your mouth, 

       weightless as I was. You led me by the  

hand into your deeps. How the river 

      swallows an eel    & was I not the victim 

 

                    of a turbulence that 

         began with you alone? 

Now, all my childhood days stand 

       against me. This body bears witness to a 

borrowed tide. The wounds fresh as spring 

have immortalized you in all the wrong places. 

& yes,   I’ve been bleeding my whole life.

              I keep sinking halfway to the shore.

But healing is an expertise I’m willing

        to learn. In this way, I come out drenched,

yet alive, with enough breath to begin again.

Photo credit: Photo by Waldir Évora from Pexels

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHIWENITE ONYEKWELU’S works have been published or are forthcoming on America Media, Brittle Paper, Kreative Diadem, ZenPens and elsewhere. He was a runner up for the Foley Poetry Contest 2020, a finalist for Stephen A. Dibiase Poetry Contest 2020 and winner of the Christopher Okigbo Poetry Prize 2019 for his poem “The Origin of Wings”. He was also shortlisted for the Kreative Diadem Annual Writing Contest 2019 and was the 2nd prize winner of the Newman Writing Contest (NMWC) 2017. Chiwenite studies pharmacy at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, Nigeria.

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