Silent screams of abandon
You came into my life, just before the ink dried
in the condolences register.
You knew I was grieving, vulnerable,
trying to hold my children’s lives together with threads.
You listened to my story—the doubled rent, the school fees...
I wouldn’t be able to pay—and acted like you cared.
You said their pain was your pain, that you couldn’t bear to see me suffer.
But now I see you for what you are: a predator behind a veil of sympathy.
You didn’t come to help, you came with lies, with a hollow promise of a better life abroad,
and what you gave me instead was sorrow, ignominy,
a stain on my name that I’ll never be able to clean up.
You used my trust, my desperation, as tools for your own gain—
then walked away clean, leaving me with the wreckage.
You abandoned me. You ruined me.
At Heathrow, when they asked about the contents of the bag—
I turned to find you, but there was only faint smoke in the wind.
You had melted into the crowd, vanishing with my hopes, my dreams.
My children, left behind—my flowers, wilted.
My sorrow screamed in silence as I lay forsaken behind bars for eight long years—
a jail sentence for my innocence.
Copyright ©
Maclawrence Famuyiwa
|