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Home No Longer Home
Home was no longer her home.
Thoughts of survival beclouded her future.
She dragged the boulder tied to her feet
by her wary mind,
each reluctance etched upon her face—
the street her new dwelling,
vagrants her family.
She walked through the dark night,
blending her body with a silhouette.
Together they moved,
hiding her from her past,
exposing her to a blurred future—
of uncertainty,
of hopelessness,
and of danger.
Then out of the moonlight, he spoke.
Hope—surely, that was what she heard.
But it came in a strange tongue:
“Are you okay?”
The strangeness of his accent
carried her beyond mountains~
where birds croaked like frogs
seeking mates.
“Why waste this beauty in the cold?”
She wondered if beauty had finally
visited her face—
for the very first time.
No one had ever used that word
to clothe her eighteen years of ugliness.
He knew she was new to the street,
but she cared less.
To be called beautiful
was relief enough.
Years of grief dissolved in a second.
She smiled—
though transitorily,
and delicately fragile—
with joy ephemerally veiling the tears
that darkness hid from him,
and from strangers~
who stared with unseen eyes
yet with a nearby gnawing laughter.
He took her home.
Suddenly, home was beautiful—
not rotten wood,
not smelly gutters.
She met his youngest child first,
two others older by years.
Disappointment pricked her:
she could not lie on his chest,
could not whisper darling—
a word stolen from her lips
twenty-five years ago
by a stranger
who now calls her “daughter.”
How can a daughter wrest love
from her mother…?
Yet the word still burned
like an ember on her tongue.
She longed to taste it.
But she knew it would be sour to taste.
She loved this kind stranger—
but her love for him,
remained
u n r e a c h a b l e.
Copyright ©
Maclawrence Famuyiwa
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