although we left,
I still remember how to walk on scattered bullets,
fake sleep with a pillow covering my ear
to keep the deafening sounds of bombs away
the heart-wrenching screams of people dying outside the wall
their last words falling like leaves on a withering tree
—to become an enemy to those you once shared with
plates of pepper soup & toasted drinks to more life,
the irony unveiled, makes me pray for amnesia sometimes/
how do i blot out this unwanted phantasm in exchange of
flowery scents, seed pots & kunu yet my placenta lies there
& though we are miles away across hills & seas
& time, they say heals, it is 15 years now
but I still jump out of sleep, hallucinating!
Rahma O. Jimoh is a writer and nature photog. She is a Hues Foundation scholar and a Pushcart Prize Nominee. A lover of sunsets and monuments. She has been published or forthcoming in Kalahari Review, Lucent Dreaming, Olongo Africa & others. She is the Poetry Editor for The Quills and a Poetry Reader at Chestnut Review.