There is so much to wait for in the world
and your father called it virtue, but what did he wait for?
A wife who owed him a kiss, a crown from a dying
king’s head, an ill child’s embrace, a life after death?
So much waiting, so you look forward to night-time
when dreams unlikely to come true are the brightest.
How much hope does it take to linger in airless spaces
because you have nowhere to go, and if you can dream
of towers, how hard can it be to fall asleep again
in the pit of your torment?
Patience is what the ancient books teach, the name of
the mother who hesitates to curse her child, the slow
decline of good times.
Patience is the waiting for an end, your loss of a friend,
the path to your drowning, the approach of your big break,
that long walk to the secret place where he kisses you and says:
I am leaving this country.
Patience is your still arm as the insects, having waited all day,
pierce your skin and draw blood, too entranced to expect their death.
Chinuzoke Chinuwa is from Ahoada East in Rivers, Nigeria. A law graduate of Rivers State University, he is interested in the essence of storytelling in various endeavours, from social justice and climate change activism to archaeology and astronomy. Find his recent work in Love Grows Stronger in Death, a project by Witsprouts. Some of his earlier writings have been published under the pseudonym Jude Chike in Lolwe, Abandon Journal, LitGleam Magazine, and elsewhere. He runs a Viewbug account for his photography.
