Beneath The Sahel Sun

CP Nwankwo

I still wake with the slice of memories, propped in the sweltering tongues of dust. They say to be born in the sequence of death is the only consequence of birth, of twinging carefully like prayers stranded in an alms bowl. I'm afraid of the things familial with language: my father first, and his attempt to live briefly inside the minutes of a flying bullet. Then a small-sized mulch of hope, flaying like harmattan at the northern edge of harm. I bet the sky has done us numbers. Maybe the 000 hours of wutar dare only fall as crackles, grace and grief in a broken man's kettle. How many amin should I carry in my soul and not feel the burden of a stranger in my hometown? Sing me the road to Papiri, sing it softly, for I want to be happy. Replace me with the old records of smoke: Suya. Kilishi. Durbar. And the teething laughter of the smallest unit of a kitchen fire. I still wake with the same measured exits of absence. Sometimes I'm only Hausa because I'm pretending to be loved, held close to the last meal before a mother's hand grows cold. Things are running out of hand, yet home has called me welcome an awful million times. Once, a man asked me where I am from. I gave him my body. At least the body is never a fig tree of its own history. It carves its skin in the sight of blood and sand. I hope one day I'll be saved by light even knowing the sinfulness of this scorching sun. My dreams are still valid and beautiful, still knowing how to wait under a baobab tree for those little moonlight stories that once made me whole.

About CP Nwankwo

CP Nwankwo (he/him), SWAN IV, identifies as an apprentice poet. He writes from Port Harcourt, Nigeria. He was recently shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship Prize for Poetry, 2025; a BotN-nominee whose work is published/forthcoming in Frontier Poetry, Palette Poetry, Mizna, Magma, Heartlines Spec, Strange Horizon, Reckoning, Consequence Forum, Lucky Jefferson, Rough Cut, Another Chicago Magazine, Big Score Lit, Poetry ColumnNND, and elsewhere. He tweets @CP Nwankwo.