issue 8
// poetry
Grief in Parentheses
by Kataru Yahya
There is a narrow one-way road that leads only to the
plumes of a cunning and insatiable grief, that is caged
in the trunk of a dead teak, that takes and takes.
None of my languages can reach it: Waale, Hausa, English.
They are hollow, they fail to hold my sorrow. What I can
do is carefully fold my grief into this poem,
allow it to speak for me while I stand in the corner, your
hands across my face, my tongue stuck in my throat, going
down, down, down until I only remember to speak in shudders
and fractured sobs and suppressed longing. My heart’s
bleeding becomes a symbol for you and the intimate knowing
of death. I know now that in cohabiting with grief, it becomes
corporeal and wears your face. Its body takes on the likeness
of yours. It dwells perpetually in the space you once owned.
My du’as find you in the other world. This, I believe.
I envy them, silent words spoken into cupped hands in the dead
of night, for seeing you. The sky returns them, paints the clouds
red. It says, ‘here I am, but not as I was before.’
about the author // Kataru Yahya
| Kataru Yahya is a Ghanaian writer and medical sonographer. She is the author of the novel Home Is a Silhouette. Her work can be found or is forthcoming in Ta Adesa, Eunoia Review, The Disappointed Housewife, Mouthful of Salt, The Hemlock Journal, 20.35 Africa, Scribbled and elsewhere. |
Instagram: @kforkataru
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