HOW A MOTHER CALLS YOUR NAME

 

THE HOUSE I WASN'T RAISED IN

 

I know my parents by blood,

but blood never taught me how a father enters a room,

how a mother calls your name from the kitchen

or how a child falls asleep between two people

who have nowhere else they would rather be.

 

I grew up learning family

from the outside of other people's windows,

watching fathers carry sleeping children from cars

while mothers fixed their collars at the gate,

wondering what kind of warmth requires no invitation.

 

At Eid, I learned the choreography of belonging,

the greetings, the embraces, the plates passed around,

but somewhere beneath the fragrance of food

was a question I kept folding like a prayer mat:

what does it feel like to be somebody's little boy?

 

Now I am older than the boy who asked that question,

but sometimes adulthood opens the same old door,

and I stand there with my hands in my pockets,

still waiting for a childhood

that never learned my address.

 

By

Nasirudeen Isola Muritala