I do not wrap my brokeness around my body

By Ola W. Halim

I. 

instead i wear guccis my sister benddown-selected at an evening flea market. i wear british-styled trousers cut from overdyed ankara. i wear super-endurant sandals supplicating the mercy of polish. i wear smiles the shape of crescents. i wear perfumes and body oils. i like smelling like chaparrals drenched in dew. when perfume and oils cower to more primordial demands, i squeeze flowerjuice into my hair. i wear listening ears for birdsong. for the quiet froths of happy water. for treewhispers on boisterous noons. everyone groans, life hard broda. everyone asks, how we go waka, my sista? everyone cries, omo. i stare at my account balance and my resolves collapse. i write tired bodies and bleak moons. failed nations and squashed butterflies. this county will not relent until it makes a sad poet out of me. so in resistance i write cinematic joys into existence. i smudge the walls of my room the colour of hope. sometimes, though, it hits me: poetry will not silence the inadequacies writhing through a body dressed in second-hand gucci and ancient sandals. but this body refuses to wrap brokeness around itself.

II. 

sometimes there are fingers of rice clinging to the innards of blackened pots, begging not to be picked clean. sometimes a teardrop of oil, a sob of vegetable oil, a spittle of salt. sometimes beans infested by weevils, beans denied the dignity of oil, white as blackboards lazily scrubbed, staring defiantly from orange bowls. sometimes there’s nothing but garri. sometimes beadlets of groundnuts in accompaniment. sometimes, a pyramidette of sugar. when sugar disappears, a sprinkle of salt. salt is the only thing that often survives the famine. but always there’s water. at first sachet water. one bag in three days. one bag a week. one bag twice a month. one sachet a day. then rainwater. cooler and cleaner. offers an earthly smell that chemicalised water has been robbed of. no matter what happens, there’ll always be water, and for this singular reason, i refuse to wrap my brokeness around my body.  

III. 

there will be egusi soup again, a spatter of locust beans, treestumps of beef bubbling therein. groundnut soup, thick as jelly, plump fishes fighting the intrusion of serving spoons. rice, long and grainy, speckled with fresh tomatoes and cucumber strips. eggs fried crisp and golden, in a generous soup of groundnut oil. a benevolence of spices. an inundation of crayfish and curlicles of onions in lavishly-oiled beans. a babel of indomie noodles poking at the ceiling. money on the palm. money in the account. money to invest in new snacks, money to squander on new dresses and perfumes, on new vocations and pasttimes. a bewilderment of abundance. for these, my robust faiths and fecund dreams, i will not wrap this brokeness around my body. 

BIO:
Ola W. Halim is a creative writer living in Nigeria. He can be found on Instagram @ola.w_halim and on X @olaposiH.