We Cannot Live Here Anymore

for people like us

For us, renegade is the word we scribble
in between dead trees growing in our hair,
because to face the madness of this country,
we must learn to label ourselves one thing,
before they shut us out with it.
I have learned that we do not dream fine dreams
only to remain in the darkness of night-time;
but to find morning in a desolate place
and watch our imaginations bloom into butterflies.

Trust me, the opposite of living is not dying.
It is us becoming hunted birds with broken wings
holding darkness in the core of our marrows
& singing without tune from empty bellies.
It is us making nests of the finest of twigs
in the roofing of drowning houses.
It is us not saying goodbye to our bodies
when we realize that we cannot live inside it anymore,
because we love to be called fine poetry,
written in the pages of a book set on fire.

________

Mazpa Ejikem is a Medical Doctor who lives and writes from Nigeria. He loves to read and write when he isn’t talking and hopes to be a Human Right Activist. He is a winner of the Festival Poetry  Calabar Poetry Prize, 2016 and a winner of the LIPFest Poetry Contest, 2018. He is also an angry feminist!