8/16/2014 0 Comments nso-tsi by Joseph Jordan-JohnsonMy hands swell with
palm oil on sun-sucked skin. My hair swoons down my back, all think-braided and glisten, sweet like kola beans. I want a man’s hand to feel silk for the first time, eyes bulging-- sulking in this womanhood, woven by these fingers made for his first child his second his third. Yams are waiting for warmth, the fire hasn’t even been stoked, the sun-dried dirt beneath my feet seeps through my toes, searing their webs and stings me—like he will. Okonkwo strolls in the hut, muscled like bison, all veins and punch-thrust, strength of God. His voice rolls through the valleys of my braids, “Where is dinner?” His eyes drive through my chest, holding my lungs captive. I can feel his fingers wrap around my throat, snap my neck like an animal’s I am his kill, his raw meat dangling from hooks, I am not fit for the love a woman deserves, he tells me my bones are dry– sucked of soul. I am nothing but a man’s hip-struggle. I am afraid of that nail-wrapping fist-blaring feeling he calls love. His fists swell with my marrow, he looms over his carcass-- body bloody but breathing. He will tell his men nothing of this. Only God will speak on his actions, steal the blood that runs from his fists and his knees and make him repent like the sinner he fights as. The next time he will cradle my body and pass his seed through me and calls for another warrior, I will gash his barrel chest, make him me—make him woman, make him carry God in his stomach, bear child, slave over yams and palm wine, drink himself drunk, hungry over every cell that fought back. Then he will see, When the moon is shining the cripple becomes hungry for a walk.
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