Protest
Roseline Mgbodichinma
or how they turn boys into a pocket of memory
In my country, if you stand by the road
With your hands in your pockets
Staring into the wind -
It means your fingers are negotiating a bomb
& uniformed men must not let you detonate
A father is left with his son as memory
Pipelines of loss forming in his skull
Sweat as thick as aloe vera,
Justice went on rehab with a morgue
& never returned
Nobody is safe as a spectator in a fight for survival
They called it a stray bullet
Like a mere fall from grace
Like some faithless intervention
But we know
We know - nothing goes astray
Without first aiming for arrival
On ‘Protest’
The #EndSars protests were an unexpected revolution in Nigeria. With police brutality becoming the norm, youth spoke up in a decentralised, peaceful protest. While people chanted with placards, others stood by to witness. The shooting of Jimoh Isiaq unfolded against a backdrop of police brutality and the fight for social change; many more youths were killed for just raising their voices on the streets in the struggle for hope. I wrote this poem to try to make sense of the sheer injustice, to show how lives are handled in my country. It is my way of documenting this vileness for future generations.
The art in this poem’s thumbnail is courtesy of © Alex Albadree (@alex.albadree).