Visits.
my homeland could be anywhere if you just take me.
—James-Ibe Chinaza.
I can laugh with you again if you do not come bearing glistening pebbles for eyes.
Remember, two years ago how bright the fire in which you drowned
how sharp the language of your dying how precise your wavering,
as though something within the city of your bones says I will be clean in death
I will fade away neatly. I swear never to hurt you, so I will not talk
about the rotten fruits I planted atop your grave
or the portrait of the pregnant wolf which I sold for half its price.
Remember ten and five years ago, how easy the breaking of all you loved
and how you said everything I loved and lost comes back to me.
Father, who taught me to transcribe the language of desire,
to cling to the tired rope of a dwindling prayer, to make you real by calling your name.
Father, I still wear your name. You who no longer remember the beauty
of a wrinkled evening.
Do not break yourself into bits to confuse death; dare to mend the brokenness
that the language of our love never managed to detect. Always, you come to me
wearing the face at peace with stillness like a creditor leaving a debt at half-a-price.
I who am eternally at debt to my insane self I who may never eternally
offset this grief. Come you always to relive the withering flame of this debt, this memory
these names of my progenitors inscribed on the streetwalls of my heart.
Father, to come again do not sit in the eyes of a beggar tempting my poor coffer,
do not fit yourself into the scream of the Christmas chicken
daring me to kill you again.
Do not come as the blood covering my wound or as the shadow of my pet dove.
I can hug you again so passionate you feel a relocation of your heart
But don’t come again as the laughter of the old man next to me in a bus
Or in between the lines of an academic form asking name of parents.
Do not leave your footprints on the door of loneliness or your medal
on the neck of a malnourished earthworm.
Father, will I see you on the tip of a breathtaking crescent in the woody advent of dawn
when I, leaving the bed you once lay, walk to the river
And wonder how many of these stars you now own.
When you come, stand at the door of my dreams, and in your cotton-soft voice
whisper, come let me take you to a home made of love
Daniel Echezona is a writer and student of the University of Nigeria. In 2024, he was shortlisted for the Wanjohi Poetry Prize. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Afrocritik, ANMLY, Brittle Paper, Neon Origami, and elsewhere.
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