Not the peaceful kind.
The kind that knows
where
everyone used to sit.
The dining chair
with the broken leg.
The mark on the wall
from when we were children.
The corner where my brother
used to throw his schoolbag.
The kitchen
where my mother
shouted
because nobody wanted
to wash plates.
Even the arguments
seem to have left
an echo behind.
I returned home
years later
and discovered
that the house had become smaller.
Or maybe
I had become larger.
The ceiling
looked lower.
The hallway looked shorter.
The rooms had lost their old proportions.
I stood where we once gathered
and could almost hear us.
A laugh.
Ordinary life!!!
The kind we never photograph
because we assume
there will always be another evening.
There wasn't.
Not exactly.
People grew.
People moved. People married.
People died.
Some relationships
became birthday messages.
Some became silence.
Some became
"we should really visit soon,"
until years passed.
That is the cruelty
of growing older:
You begin to understand
that many endings
do not announce themselves.
There is no music.
No final speech.
Sometimes
it is simply the last Sunday
everyone sat around the same table.
The last Christmas
before somebody moved away.
The last time
your father carried you
without saying,
"This is the last time."
We do not know
which ordinary moments
are secretly historical.
That is why I am trying
to pay attention now.
To sit longer. To answer the phone.
To take the picture.
To stay at the table
after the food is finished.
To ask,
"How are you really?"
Not because I am sentimental.
Because I finally understand
that time does not steal
with violence.
It steals quietly.
One ordinary day
at a time.
And one day
you return home
and the house is still standing,
but everybody
who made it home
has become a memory.
---
*About the poet*
Gideon Adeyeye is a Nigerian-born poet and spoken word artist based in Manchester, UK. His love affair with poetry began in 2018 during his final year at university at Dwelling Place, a programme organised by FCS. Watching poets perform with such depth awakened a fascination with the power of spoken words.
With vivid storytelling, Gideon turns lived experience into poetry that feels both personal and universal. His work often journeys from pain to purpose, from hardship to hope, asking what we become when life demands strength before we are ready.
For Gideon, poetry is more than words on a page, it is testimony. A way of looking back at where we have been, honouring those who carried us, and declaring that our beginnings do not have the final word.
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