Anointing Obuh is an emerging writer from Africa. She enjoys reading, writing & a hearty meal. Her works are forthcoming at The Cabinet of Heed and Honey&Lime. She currently studies English and literature at a Nigerian University.

/\

What was my mother thinking when she named me

There are no humming no mocking
birds here in black Africa where
sounds travel faster than a mother’s voice in my ear
Like the kukuruku on a birds beak
Like the pum pim pum.. I can’t be a trumpet sound if I tried
I can’t be.
Living through war all the time.

My mother called me Omoyeme
& her legs bent into a house
My child is greater, my child is greater than
Makes me want to offer myself up
For sins yet unborn, not ready to be offered

My lover says I carry a nightingale in my mouth
He didn’t ask if it was chewed
I didn’t say if he needed me
to be a trumpet sound I could try
I could be surviving all the time

When mother built a castle on a ship
did she know I would grow into a short spine
Shifty eyed, small hands woman
dreaming of dreaming, saying, doing

My lover is not my lover anymore

My name is incense offered to the gods in a sly kind of begging
My body is a prophet wailing in a child’s voice
Fervent, terrified, stuck in the empty room of my mother’s house, in her mouth
Between her teeth chanting,
My child is greater, my child is greater than

They say it was a slow birth,
It must have been the pain.

\/