i am from blanket parachutes made out of midnight storms & city lights guiding 5 o’clock rush hours whether i like it or not, there is a rift on my tongue the size of a knife cut & every language i speak is born broken and jagged around the edges. at night, i sing myself into a terrain of my mother’s absence where the desert sand wants to sink me into its nameless mess. i am a long line of women, holding onto each other within arm’s reach, panic shut deep into their chest, a muffled beating that we turn into music: [anansesem sisi o, sen so ara] my grandmother was a baker. thick white hair falling like a broom at her feet my grandmother used to bargain with the night a loaf for daylight, a parcel to keep the shadows kept. my grandmother used to sleep on a bench for her back pain, warding age away with her miswak sticks and holy oil. and i, i am the learning. the city skylines and hard air, an engine beating life into a folded room. i am the remainder. the sneak in the shut eye. the thing you stay behind for out of force.
Claudia Owusu is a Ghanaian Writer studying Creative Writing at Otterbein University. She is 21 years old and she currently lives in Westerville, Ohio, where she is in her third year of undergraduate school. Her work has appeared in Quiz & Quill, Otterbein University’s Literary Magazine, Wusgood.black, and Ohio’s Best Emerging Poets: An Anthology.