by Overcomer Ibiteye

When this is over, we’ll be enmeshed in a battle for names, a clamor to be known, to be called something. Every one of us will want to be seen on TV, to be sandbagged into ashy headlines. “Sixty families, now homeless.” When our kids ask us to tell them where our identities are buried, our throat cells will fold into extinction. How do you describe the anatomy of loss to a child? This sacred space where our plush barks are stored before decaying into sculpture, do you call it a tomb? And this compressed mass of sticky air leaking with pus and carbon, do you call it the future? We’ll have to borrow fancy words like “lumbering” and “logging” to soften the thud of a body falling into oblivion. We could have shown them our scars, but they’ve been blowtorched into darkness, so we don’t even have a proof of our pain. Names are our last resort. That’s the only way we can be reminded of our existence. Call us anything. Broken furniture. Wooden cupboards. Anything.

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Overcomer Ibiteye is a Nigerian poet and writer. She’s also an alumnus of the SprinNG Writing Fellowship. Her works have appeared in anthologies like BPPC, Iskanchi, Scrawl Place Mag, and others. She was also shortlisted for the African Writers Awards 2021.