Waiting
(for Leah Sharibu)
It could take a thousand days
to go round the world with a broken wing
uncertainty is the closest our prayers have been to dormancy.
the light that falls from the sky today stains its parallel rays
against the footprints that led the girls out of home.
This world is a ripple beneath a ridge of sand
formed by sighs.
I wore a gown made of cobweb
because everything invisible may grow into a spider.
The air is thick to breathe and this means there are many
ghosts in the air.
Because grasshoppers eat up the sky in Dapchi,
the women made horseshoes from the fire in their stomachs
and here we go again, the horses galloped through the storm
and came back without riders.
Every step toward the moon is a trap to burn us
from the atlas.
The women ran even before the gunshots became audible
but not the woman whose daughter never returned
because she calls God
with a different tongue. She sat on a stool in the kitchen,
waiting for the world to sing her daughter back home,
to lead her through thorns, until she finds the footpath
filled with ashes and bullet shells fired into the air
to disperse the crowd of ghosts, or the boots that must have
belonged to the riders.
She sat mute in the kitchen, her daughter’s face did not pop
from the flames.
It could take a thousand days
to go round the world with a broken wing
uncertainty is the closest our prayers have been to dormancy.
the light that falls from the sky today stains its parallel rays
against the footprints that led the girls out of home.
This world is a ripple beneath a ridge of sand
formed by sighs.
I wore a gown made of cobweb
because everything invisible may grow into a spider.
The air is thick to breathe and this means there are many
ghosts in the air.
Because grasshoppers eat up the sky in Dapchi,
the women made horseshoes from the fire in their stomachs
and here we go again, the horses galloped through the storm
and came back without riders.
Every step toward the moon is a trap to burn us
from the atlas.
The women ran even before the gunshots became audible
but not the woman whose daughter never returned
because she calls God
with a different tongue. She sat on a stool in the kitchen,
waiting for the world to sing her daughter back home,
to lead her through thorns, until she finds the footpath
filled with ashes and bullet shells fired into the air
to disperse the crowd of ghosts, or the boots that must have
belonged to the riders.
She sat mute in the kitchen, her daughter’s face did not pop
from the flames.
Hussain Ahmed is a Nigerian writer and environmentalist. His poems are featured or forthcoming in Prairie Schooner, The Cincinnati Review, The Journal, Magma, Nashville Review, and elsewhere.
The poem was inspired after the abduction of 110 school students in Dapchi, Yobe State, in Nigeria by the Boko Haram terrorist group. After several “bargains” with the Nigerian government, the girls were freed, and the victimized community cheered the terrorists when they returned their girls. After proper count, one of the girls, ‘Leah Sharibu,’ did not return, allegedly because she refused to denounced her Christianity. It’s been a year since and she’s yet to return back to her family.
The poem was inspired after the abduction of 110 school students in Dapchi, Yobe State, in Nigeria by the Boko Haram terrorist group. After several “bargains” with the Nigerian government, the girls were freed, and the victimized community cheered the terrorists when they returned their girls. After proper count, one of the girls, ‘Leah Sharibu,’ did not return, allegedly because she refused to denounced her Christianity. It’s been a year since and she’s yet to return back to her family.