After Fatihah Quadri Eniola

we have the same scars. your
body is the life-size presentation
of those photos i see in humanitarian reports.
you said our bodies don’t belong to us.
even these bodies, you said, shall be left
when death summons us to the beyond.
we spend the evening watching stars
crawling out of dying sun’s mouth to take their places
on a night’s sky and this is how we learn
death is just a loss of form. we spend
the harvest festival with our lovers
behind thin thickets beyond the village.
i said i could spend the next with mine on a marital bed.
but you said not even our lovers’ bodies were ours to own, too,
and when i told you to teach me how to do ayaya (in case i married her)
you taught me how to flee with wounded legs instead.