This poem is about my sisters,
Sa’adatu, Chiamanda, & Damilola.
Meaning, every girl is a pendulous rose, waiting
To spill her fragrance on the face of the earth.

Tell me, what is more cruel than
Stripping a flower off its fragrance?

​I see my sister’s voice echoing into exile
Because father labels her with nubility.

I was the river god’s daughter,
And a daughter is nothing more than
a blank page after all,
waiting to be written.
When Apollo was my pursuer
my father,
transformed me to
a laurel tree.
It did make great poetry
of course;
and there was justice too
in the sense of order
or what they call balance,
a cleverness;

Haste is not a virtue. What I would have sworn were memories, I now realize might have
been dreams, tucked into the nautilus of a fevered brain cowering in a corner..  I have
been so rash my entire life. Slow living is extolled among the aged, but what else are they
supposed to do? The dry mouths, gaping, and the rheumy eyes searching have seen better
days.  If I stretch the skin, like cellophane, across the cheekbones of my father’s face, he
becomes a blur, a thing out of focus, but the clock is still ticking and we count every one.
My mother will crochet her own variegated shroud to save anyone else the trouble. Her
grimace masquerades as a smile, and much pain is to be given up for the sanctity of the
world. The humoral issues at play have fangs, and they are planted firmly in our necks.
Our moon faces are waxy and tinged with yellow. They lack the grace we believe might
save us. The breviary with its colorful ribbons collects dust on the nightstand, its pages
warped, but still, it moans in the dark. Everything is beyond the urgent grasp.
The shivering in the night, the drenching of sweat in the day is not an omen. But it might
as well be.