BORROWED FATHERS
There were men who corrected me
before they ever asked what had made me that way,
their voices becoming walls in rooms
where I was only trying to understand
what it meant to belong somewhere.
I learned to read footsteps before faces,
to know the difference between anger and tiredness,
to keep my questions folded under my tongue
because some houses teach children
that silence is another form of good behaviour.
I watched other boys lean against their fathers
like the world had already promised them somewhere to fall,
while I carried my questions quietly,
like a stranger carrying luggage through an airport,
never certain which door was mine.
Still, Allah knows the rooms I survived,
the names I swallowed, the nights I outgrew,
and if childhood gave me no permanent shelter,
perhaps that is why I learned
to build one inside myself.
By
Nasirudeen Isola Muritala
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