Adedoyin kayode

Adedoyin kayode
is an emerging writer of both poems and short stories. His writing explores pain, love and depression. He was a member of the Transcendence master class facilitated by Aremu Adebisi Adams. His poem has appeared on Librettong Magazine and he was short listed for the African writers lockdown challenge. Watching in sigh-lens is his best way of recording scences.

MY FEAR

My grief needles me & like a deflated ball,
I fear i might be unable to bounce back to sanity.

I watch my dad pay attention to every letter on the daily times but
He never saw the headlines of frustration boldly written on my face.

My mum places a pacifier in form of  ” we’ll talk later ” on my lips
But she never creates time to talk.

Yesterday, my lover saw my scars & mistook them for tattoos
Not knowing they are short- hand symbols of  word  ears  has refused to accomodate.

My mind is becoming my only interlocutor & words in me are getting heavy-
I fear i might fall to the ground soon / unheard.

SILENCE MY MOTHER’S TONGUE

I

When i first learnt silence,
it was through my mother.
In the name of being submissive,
her tongue; a scroll of words folded behind her lips

You would know she has a lot to say
When you find her in the kitchen slicing her thoughts like onion as they tear her
or when you catch  glimpses  of her lips wobbling with broken words, seeking path through them.
She says  here  in the house of a male chauvinist, silence is a feminine dialect.

II

Mother taught me to respect silence,
to grill words on the griddle of my tongue till it tastes voiceless.
to pronounce the word pain with a teary eyes,
to explain violence with the scars on my skin & the reflection of his palm on my cheek.

How do i forget this tongue that shredded my
mother into pieces,
because like my mother did, i’m holding my voice in my hand like pills about to swallow.

Will I die too?