This is for homes broken into shards of dirges and sorrow, for families with a loss or two, for cities that have touched the face of death and know every contour on her face by name.
This is for Borno, for Jos, for Kaduna, for Lagos, for Ibadan, for Delta, for Benue, for Kano, for Imo, for cities that have tasted blood and seen the breaking of young bones, for cities where the song of morning birds is a cry for revival, for help, for justice, for peace, for freedom to speak without a machete switching music in a voice.
This is for cities with a broken memory for the days in October, for cities where footprints of the dead are littered across night sky as stars, as scepters, as a story with more emptiness than a graveyard.
This is for boys lowered in coffins into the earth for stretching their voices into an expanse of plead for a better country- for a country not waylaying a dream till it’s tamed and left in the pool of blood, for a country where it’s no crime to bloom like the greens of Kinshasa, for a country where you do not look over your shoulders to a threat or a sword reaching for the song in your throat.
This is for the boys in Lekki massacre growing into flowers from the bullets planted in their skulls- for Akin, for Ifeanyi, for John, for Olalekan and for other unidentified bodies.
This is for boys with purple dreams in dreads- tamed in their longing to survive, for the 59 boys massacred in Buni yadi, for boys diced and barbecued into the earth for chasing decent dreams in daylight.
This is for the girls bruised and buried in shallow graves- for Hiny inuibong, for Franca, for Josephine, for girls with aspirations with more watt than sunlight, for girls with vision full of wings and milk and honey, for girls butchered with seeds, love and light on their inside, for girls who went missing a second to their blooming, for girls in their prime pulled out of girlhood with a map of reawakening on their tongues, this is for the girls murdered at the forehead of dawn at Unijos – for Doris, for Danladi, for Kwahaondo, for girls chasing their dreams within the walls of a classroom before bumping into the web of cold death, for girls the pride on their mother’s face dimmed out of their lights, for girls the rays of happiness on their father’s face lynched to tales of broken records.
And this is for you, you whom this country has turned a temple of grief, you whom she met as blues and left as a broken symphony, this is for you, for the wars you have had to endure in a country that cannot afford your peace, for you whom she accosted with sorrow even with the love in your heart.
This is for the youths, the one dying every day to live, the one fetching God behind closed doors, the one crippled by insurgencies and insecurities, the one with degrees but no job, no hand to bring an end to the wailing in their soul, the one with hollows in their eyes and frustrations beneath their smiles, the one praying for better days, for a day when the rising of the sun will really be the rising of a new dawn, of love, of light and of a life emptied of the weights and wraths of this country, of the world.
This is for you!
