black women being good bandages
i
because every child is god—every child is sinless—every child
can redeem its father from his sins,
my father is who i pity
who i pitied first. it's his sweat i valued the most,
his pain, the only pain that mattered;
until my eyes opened, and i saw...
ii
my father was a beautiful black hero, or at least that was what i thought;
a pair of shoulders
that lifted all the weight of this world,
& it was him against the world, all dark, bullet-prone skin,
my father, my very, very tired father...
iii
i thought,
my father is the gatekeeper and at the same time
the messenger,
& nobody is bigger than my father,
not even god.
iv
my mother sits by her and my father's bedroom door every morning
sewing her vagina.
in the kitchen, her tears drop into the pot of soup she cooks every morning because
my father only eats fresh soups,
and if my mother is a tree i am a mere branch
i know this
when my mother's stomach rose with my sister
i knew she was not mine to keep
to go into and inhabit
every time i wished
because i never owned her
and never will
so
why doesn't my father
understand this
Omotoyosi Salami is a poet and writer living in Lagos, Nigeria. A lot of her writing is influenced by the various inequalities that exist in her country. Her work has been published in Kalahari Review, Brittle Paper, and Constellation Journal. If you do not find her reading a book, you will find her writing something. She is on Twitter as @HM_Omotoyosi.