
Only Sad Flowers Wither
By Aishah Ahmad Imam
We were born into this fallacy. Utterly.
Our fingernails are kept. Hair in an afro or dídì.
Beauty is crude & souls, distinct.
Behind every door was an àpàlà strung with a piano in debris.
Meanwhile, the moths shall eat. Man shall become.
My grandfather shall see me mock with wires & complain.
Wires in my wrapper, wire my veins.
This is an opening like God’s promise; through space, under the water…
To not want to die is to tremble, starting with our grey hairs.
The fear of history withering as it sprouts.
Yet, I find history once my glasses are on.
& I take shelter in the cities of technology.
Barbie stories that have vehicles fly like the dreams I love
& I, recouping my culture in chips that my essence may remain.
To hear folklores of ògún from the cloned ògún & live the past I never saw.
Hereafter, we write from our thoughts & scribble poetry from thick sleep.
& we perceive melanin bots sing proverbs as though watching the harmattan
sun from a yellow room. I could have it dressed in aso òkè & sleeken its flesh. Name
it Móremí, its neck in sègi & have science understand the nature it has become.
To see blossoms from metal & call it grace…
We’ve not built the future from our palms. The past never grew tangy.
Hearts were never infected but nourished that life may be kinder.
To quiver is to fear extinction, yet the death that would kill chronicles
will be truer than a miracle-working hologram illustrating the bàtá dance.
BIO
Emerging from a family of creatives, Aishah Ahmad Imam, TPC IX, is a Nigerian writer and a Linguist. She was the second runner-up of the University of Ilorin 2022 SU writers’ competition (Poetry Category) & was short-listed in 2023. She emerged among the top 10 of the Brigitte Poirson Poetry Contest (BPPC) August/September category, 2022. She has works in: That black boy Review, The Kalahari Review, The Shallow Tales Review & GHOSTCITY Review. She tweets @AhmadAishahh.