Charcoal skies over Yelwa

By Chigozie Abraham

We name the evening after a child who once danced in the ash
of harvest fires. Yelwa, where the roofs bend under smoke

-screened prayers. The air, with the aftertaste of yesterday’s
promises. The mango tree, still in the distance, cradles a kite

in its limbs—torn polythene, red string like a split vein trailing.
By the stream where the goats drank before the banks went dry,

a girl balances a silver basin on her head—a fading moon.
Inside—okra, tight-lipped, next to a stub of soap.

Children mark territory with broken flip-flops, trace history
in the dust with fingers that do not yet know how to pull triggers.

A man sharpens his cutlass by the husk of his father’s Peugeot,
radio static crooning a sermon—the word rebuild, on loop.

Somewhere, a boy sells petrol in soda bottles, lips lined
with the color of fumes. At dusk, women uncoil their backs

from the weight of a market day, semi-faded ankara wrappers
stiff with red dust and the hard currency of survival. Yelwa—

you are a wound that scabs in color. A map drawn in soot,
where faith limps beside hunger. Yet we carry the sky, barren

with promises on our heads, even when it rains nothing.

BIO:
Chigozie Abraham is a Nigerian poet whose work explores the intersections of memory, place, and perseverance. His poetry reflects the everyday truths of life, captured through richly woven imagery. Twitter (X): @KingGozie07; Instagram: @chi_gozie100