Feral

By Muhammad M Ubandoma

The first time a bullet fissured your mother—
it did not ask. It split the night open
on a wreckage, lit soft with flame. The air shapeshifting
with dread. Body, sizzling where skin used to be.
Your mother poured her voice into the world—
it spilled into your fingers
before you knew what fingers were for.
Crescendo. Her final words—a hymn,
a howl, a hunger braided into the mono
-shape of a daughter. You wore lust like a moist
dress— it dripped behind your ears, slid down your back,
tasting the crevices of your becoming.
You tried to stop it. But the world returns
to the body what it owns. Now, your body
is a cathedral with a burnt altar.
Every time you pray, your mother’s voice
rises through the floorboards, swollen and songless.
The sun doesn’t shine here— it seethes. And you:
quivering, a wick already kissed by flame.
Your lips hiss at the peak of heat. You remember.
Men will come. They will come with velvet
in their mouths and violence in their hands.
They will touch you like a secret
that no one survives. They will dress their desire in pity,
call it kindness as they press you back into dust.
When they come, you run like your legs are wings
and the world is already on fire.

BIO:
Muhammad M Ubandoma is a poet, short story writer, and spoken word artist living in Nigeria.