our home on wellington street Boloere Seibidor
i remember the first time we welcomed silence into our home on wellington street. my mother pranced about in a nightdress so dark that it resembled death / everything that was dead or was dying. the wind returned my father as a refugee in his own home an hour later, incensed in the sweat of another woman’s thighs, pitching side to side, mumbling words handpicked from garbage. the quietude that accompanied dinner was enough to ridicule a graveyard / enough to swallow up a tide / to give music to the rackety footfall of rats on the cracked roof & my father fell asleep as everyone else struggled to unearth an appetite from a mound of deadened want. months later, my father still swears that the only times he ever cheated were in rounds of chess with my brother, where he manipulates the rules in his stead & in return, mother tenders him her deaf ear, counting the days left till her depart. today, she puts the leftovers of her ogbono soup on the cooker & forgets. five minutes later, the house smells of smoke & ashes. father has put off the cooker but he howls out her name in a voice turbulent enough to sustain a thunderstorm to remind her, here, where death is also a metaphor for a rebirth, that anyone is capable of making a mistake.
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