Woman beneath the Sheets

 

It rained the night before

and it rained on a woman

beneath the sheets.

 

I was there, perched at a corner and stared

for beneath the sheets was a woman― my mother.

I could not speak for my mouth was

already a graveyard swallowing her bits by bits.

 

She possessed a body like that of a

starved and deformed child weary of

these past years when a woman

would wake each morning with the fear

that in the evening she may never see her child anymore

as playgrounds are turned grounds for grenades and bombs

and graves for people you know and don’t know;

that her husband who went to trade may never return

as no one knows when the herdsmen or boko haram will

rush in with their hands filled with death and deaths.

 

It rained the night before

beneath the sheets, and it

rained on a woman

who was my mother, and

there was a speaking silence.

 

 

About the Poet

Chinua Ezenwa-Ohaeto (@ChinuaEzenwa) is a Nigerian and a lover of literature. His works have won the Association Of Nigerian Author’s Literary Award for Mazariyya Ana Teen Poetry Prize, 2009; National Association Of Students Of English Language and Literary Studies Certificate of Honour as the Best Student Poet, 2012, Delsu Chapter. He became a runner-up in Etisalat Prize For Literature, Flash fiction, 2014 with I Saved My Marriage. He also has contributed his works in Of Minstrelsy and Mask,Matatu, Germany; Awka Journal Of English Language and Literature; Lunaris Review; AFREADA; KALAHARI REVIEW and elsewhere.