mother knows how to name pain, not in language,
but in the way silence sticks to her after anima christi.
she has a tongue made of incense and a heart
that jingles crisply like the sanctus bell. once,
she sketched on my chest, a tabernacle with graphite and fire.
said, beginnings are like that: rituals, then dedication.
asked that i never let the zeal of god slip off my palms,
never let his words slip off my tongue.
in the corners of her room, i hear a voice, unfamiliar.
a man shaped not like my father enters her breath
and she lets him eat where father had blessed the table.
but i know she tells me, god frowns at sin,
so what name do i give to the nights
she becomes a sermon condemned by the holy pulpit?
i say “father” and she becomes a faithless psalm, her eyes
open like the gap between memory and mourning.
she forgets sin, like grief, is fluent in a thousand languages.
it chameleons itself. sometimes it is jasmine scented.
sometimes it sings jazz into afrobeat while a stranger
cuts pomegranates in another man’s kitchen.
i wish to tell her that holiness is not the absence of touch,
but where it lands. how it wanders within. and i forget too,
i forget i am watching from a window not meant to be a witness.
but the body never lets go; not mine, not hers, not his.
they all speak; some in moans, some in sighs sounding
like invocation. some in the sweet-red heart of a boy
who learns to cry without breaking a river. and maybe,
just maybe, this is what it means to inherit
both love and fire, to call it family, to call it sin.
Daniel Aôndona is a Nigerian writer from the Middle Belt. His work appears in journals such as LOLWE, The B’k, and Chestnut Review, among others. He reads for VoALit and edits in a few quiet corners of the literary space. He is drawn to comic literature, dark humor, and short-form horror. Reach him on Instagram: danielaondona30 an @aondonadaniel30 on X.