What We Carry Home
by Chiwenite Onyekwelu
I’ve been here for far too long,
I feel my body steeling into the soil,
making roots. Nothing grows beneath
my feet, or close to it, or along
this pathway where I sit to number
my children every day. I’m not afraid,
I swear, I just worry too much about
what we carry home whenever we
collide. My son is 6 and rocket-shaped,
a wild thing. Now and again, I nail
him to the wall, pray his body into
his room. I say, you must learn to sit
in the house long enough until this flood
sun-dries. Each time a country drowns
in the News, I memorize half the figures
that try to wash our faces down
the drains. My daughter thinks we’ve
overstayed the holiday. She rearranges
her body on the couch, asks me to map
out all of the spots where her shadow
begins to rot. I decline, basin her on my
laps and smuggle her into safety.
There is nothing else to save from the
flood except this poem. Except you.
Source: From the Isolation Issue (September 2020)
What We Carry Home
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.
