Inheritance

By Rasheed Ayinla Shehu

I watch an infantry of ants heave
the cadaver of a roach on their back,

and I realise the weight of your legacy on mine—
how everything you left behind outsizes me.

Atop the baggage, the surname Shehu. I can't
recite my Qur'an without choking on

the alphabet, without the semantics being
somersaulted: the Imam, in his condolence,

says, man's last breath is سحر (secret) undecipherable
byسير (magic). In my explication, the secret

becomes the magic, the magic becomes the secret,
& Mother, the victim of my linguistic naivety.

A friend saw me robed in your agbada & swore
he could find me fins to propel myself inside it.

I could stomach the sting of the joke, but not
the accuracy of the metaphor. Say,

orphans are hydrofaunas navigating the storms
of life alone? I'm learning how to bypass the reality

I can't handle, like your old Jincheng motorcycle
rusting in the passageway. In Mother's words,

Inheriting the dead in a way is inheriting their death,
like how any reference to me is incomplete without

the death-suffix: that is the deceased’s son,
that is the deceased’s heir—needless to say my shoulders
are slack from carrying the burden of your death.

BIO:
Rasheed Ayinla Shehu (RAS) hails from Ilorin, the capital of Kwara State. He is a graduate of English and Literary Studies, from the University of Ilorin. A fellow in Sprinng Writing Fellowship Cohort 8, his work has appeared or is forthcoming on 20.35 Africa, Ake Review, Brittle Paper, TSTR, the Kalahari Review, Akpata Magazine, the Muse Journal, Fiery Scribe Review, Afrihill Press and elsewhere. His poem was shortlisted for the Eriata Oribhabor Poetry Prize 2024.