the poem in which every line is an answer to Soonest Nathaniel’s “why?”

Adamu Yahuza Abdullahi

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After Soonest Nathaniel

-because the night sky is purpled with the blood of my brothers,
-because I do not love my brothers.
-because it is placed there with the absence of my brothers.
-because they sit in the hollowness of what they hear and each smells like jasmine and rose.
-because the village sleeps under a cloud of ash.
-because the village is a shore that plays hide and seek with the sea.
-because River Niger is thirsty.
-because the rain that falls here comes with mouths.
-because all my lovers died the day after i killed our neighbor’s cat.
-because the community avenged their death and the war goes on and on.
-because the village is now full of ghosts.
-because the village is a mirror.
-because everything looks larger than they appear.
-because a six-legged horse walks through my window every night.
-because i do not have the word for the sound it makes.
-because the boy that heard the sound ran mad.
-because his mother cried all the tears she had.
-because the difference between tears and water is pain.
-because the difference between tears and water is innocence.
-because the old woman at the next junction wings with the night.
-because no one said they saw her with wings when the elders asked.
-because here everything demands a witness.
-because fear is the safest way to preserve the air in your lungs.
-because the journey of survival starts from your mouth.
-because home is a minefield.
-because we are memories separated from history.
-because our emptiness whispers I am full.
-because we are waiting for the morning to understand our pain.
-because our kind of pain does not have doors.
-because this poem can not be longer than this.
-because silence is this house a boy like me lives, through music and noise.