Lind Grant-Oyeye
Guerre
                       or, The Way We Are.

We never know, how we get here from there.
I wanted to ask my lover with passion, find out mystery
of clothes on the floor. How did we get here?
I suppose bears also miss the point between hibernate
fully clothed and autumn-scavenge.
Between unknown seasons tasted with trembling tongue-tips,
between old tales and toothless story tellers.
We’ve taught ourselves to count
distance between start and almost finished—
Maybe someday we might find answer to this:
burning clothes on floors,
forgotten,
and they do not even belong to lovers.

The African Girl-child

We grew up one at a time,
but sang soft tuned lullabies almost
in tandem. Sometimes forte was scribbled
on the walls by the last child to switch off lights,
turned off lights in a room already darkened by dark hue.
We remember forte does not mean “let’s hear your voices, concert-style”
It is another word for the strength upon which old tunes slowly grew.
The strength of the floor on which our wobbly cradles lay,
the strength of hands which snatch soft tune lullabies before they hit the walls.

_ _

Lind Grant-Oyeye was born in Nigeria. She is the recipient of a Human Rights Poetry Award from the Universal Human Rights Student Network.

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