The cities and her people, and the war within
in the shattered sky, cities float like memories almost forgotten. temples which unite the soil, drift unmoored in the weightless void, where wars raged long ago. perhaps tomorrow, between nameless places, & faceless gods.
blood is a currency this earth no longer accepts. seeping into the hollow bones of the planets, & turning iron into dust & stone into vapors. the children born between unknown time speak a world their parents capture in folktale but find no trace left to the crossroads.
by which men are shadows cast by light that doesn't touch them; fighting for flags that flutter in digital winds. they carry rifles firing across the starfields only to return, carrying long faces.
once, a soldier on a real earth could dig his boots into the sand, & feel the texture between his fingers in Sambisa. but now, his war is fought in sleep, the endless chase of an enemy with his face. & now wakes to clean hands, still the sky bleeds unhealing wounds.
they suffer. oceans too misremember how to shelter ships. only storms are born out of angry histories. somewhere forgotten, a woman plants a seed in poisoned soil, & waits for it to grow into something, not food, not hope, but memory to teach her children in case government bans history at school like ours. i watch her speaks with her son about: a time when the earth below was soft and the rain fell without smoky tastes in the air.
he listens as though not listening to the words because it's the first time learning their backyard is a bomb-way.
at the end, nothing remains but echoes of what has been. a world where ghosts walk in daylight. where children identify their parents only through photographs on the walls.
where the rivers run dry in August, & the past swallows the future. the stars blinking in a distance; witnessing but none speaking.
sorry, no matter the defense mechanism, all of us are refugees of forgotten wars in the world we did not build. & when we make this story as an offer, all we get in return is
sorry
because no perfect word describes endless damages. even now, we are not resting.
Nweke, Benard Okechukwu (he/his/him) is a Nigerian poet. Winner of the 2022 Neptune Prime poetry prize, winner of the 2024 ZODML poetry prize, finalist for the 2023 Akachi Chukwuemeka literature prize. He’s a journalist and a photographer, and a final year Mass
The Albion Review 