once, under the watchful gaze of a dying moon,
my grandfather painted the night with stories of achukwu.
of how masquerades swirled like whispering
winds, their rhythms a heartbeat of the earth.
but what if we have already lost these stories?
what if they disappear, becoming mere museum relics?
looking at my nephew & niece, i grieve i can never
show them achukwu, nor tell them how they swirled
in a dream last night, i lost my way to our ancestral
stream ezeudo, where i first buried my milk tooth
this is how it feels to lose the language in your mouth
& never find it again—like a tooth tossed upon a rooftop
i fear that if we cannot recognise the footpaths to
ezeudo, then we cannot recognise ourselves
i worry that my unborn kids will not know the beauty of marriage, where
vows were spoken under plantain trees, with palm wine, abacha & ugba
how do we tell these stories when everything changes before our eyes?
how? what dance can we dance in the face of a new song?
last night, in another dream, a woman asked me,
“where are you from? which village? who is your father?
& his father, and your language?” i shook my head— a silent:
“all i remember exists now in this worn-out poem”
kólí Stephen Nonso (He/Him) is a Nigerian writer whose poems have been featured in Feral Journal, Ebedi Review, Brittle Paper, Ngiga Review, Praxis Magazine, The Shallow Tales Review, African Writer, Adelaide Literary Magazine New York, Olney Magazine, Tuck Magazine, Ofi Press, and elsewhere. His short story has appeared in the Best of African Literary Magazine. He has contributed to both national and international publications and anthologies. He is a joint winner of the May 2020 Poets in Nigeria (PIN) 10-day poetry challenge, first runner-up in the Fresh Voice Foundation Poetry contest, and third prize winner of the Akuko Magazine Inaugural Prize for Poetry 2021. He was also shortlisted for the 2024 Akachi Chukwuemeka Prize for Literature. His bio was included in the ‘Who’s Who of Emerging Writers 2021’ by Sweetycat Press.