Still Flowers by Chinemerem Prince Nwankwo

ripped & opened, I pour into a poem half-stripped of me.
It is a girl story napped in oil-beaned skin.                                  maybe a rustic girl
crawling into a path her mother first knew blood.
         before me, & the body posed as fresh daffodils.
​perhaps, tender & mild like two petite breasts
finding expression.
like the soothing fragrance of ignorance.
& I held my body, the graffiti of a clean slate. & blood gushed

           from the mouth beneath my skirt.
my haven flooded. I shuddered, not knowing the dialect
of assuaging. I escaped my body to derail the naked shame.
I carried a mien & an aperture of a spirit
                                                                     my mother cascaded into.
                                                                    —the ritual of pollinating
                                                                                  stigma.

mother I was scared. didn’t know what to do but the handkerchief
bore me witness.                     I knew not & if I did, I without to do.
& silence was the art of becoming. sniveling & acquiescing.
                                                                             fragile & dead.

I palate like still flowers,
my hand molding an
ascension. Father, watch
your daughter         ‘cause
                                            if not blood, is how to nurse the penury of blood.


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Chinemerem Prince Nwankwo, SWAN IV, is currently a final year student of the Department of History and International Studies, University of Uyo, Nigeria. He is a Poetry Editor, The Cloudscent Journal and the Assistant Poetry Editor, Arkore Arts. He finished as a finalist, Pawners Paper Poetry Contest, 2024. He was shortlisted for the Sevhage-KSR Hyginus Ekwuazi Poetry Prize, 2023 and was placed as the Second Runner Up, SprinNG Annual Poetry Prize, 2023. He tweets @ CP Nwankwo.