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      June 22, 2016How My Mother Spends Her NightsRasaq Malik Gbolahan

      My mother spends her nights
      watching as darkness swallows
      the remaining light in the sky.
      She spends her nights unveiling
      the scars that stretch like wind
      on her skin, the anger that balloons
      in her heart, and the voice of my
      father that aches her ears.
       
      My mother spends her nights in
      an empty room, talking about my
      father’s life that cages her’s:
      my father’s name becoming
      a mantra in the mouth
      of every woman, my father’s face
      becoming a nightmare whenever
      he returns home with his pockets
      stuffed with used condoms, with
      his jacket reeking of alcohol and smoke
      of cigarettes.
       
      My mother spends her nights
      trying to open her heart with
      another man’s fingers, trying
      to see her name etched on the
      brow of someone else. My mother
      spends her nights dressing her aged
      body with cologne, waiting for a man
      to say there will be time to fall in love
      again and again.

      from #51 - Spring 2016

      Rasaq Malik Gbolahan

      “I started writing poems as an undergraduate at the University of Ibadan. I would go to bookshops to fish poetry collections and devour them. I would go out at night to watch the moon and recount how it moves. Later, I started writing about my country—Nigeria—where problems ranging from political instability and unrest plague everywhere. I also wrote about my life. I believe poetry has a way of exhuming our thoughts and presenting them to the world. It has a way of creating a world where every reader finds solace. It has a way of transforming us into what probes the world we live in as time ticks. It breaks and stitches us. It immortalises us.”

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