My mother’s hands on the kitchen counter, the way she gathers and cuts through spinach like a slippery dream. A reaper’s symphony of green.
How she stops every three-fifth of a minute to slip her fingers through the mound, grab a handful and then let it fall slowly back into the tray like a bridesmaid testing confetti.
I would sit on a little stool where my grandmother had once sat to rein my arms back with sturdy thighs while she poured some vile medicine down my throat. My head angled oddly, still in protest to the tight cornrows on it.
This is where we meet, mother and I. She with her trays and array of knives: cleaver, spear point, serrated blade, the ones still in their casings on the wall. Chopping, slicing, scrapping and I sitting on my little stool, watching, translating.
The day father died and they took him away, his eyes wide open, mirroring the shock in mine, Mother chopped. Carrots, lettuce, even ginger that she didn’t like. She had arched her back and rolled her shoulders intermittently, the rhythm of a fish gliding through water.
The morning we woke up and found that my brother had left, she had gone out and returned with a bag full of vegetables. That night, she bathed me with herself and we slept in my bed. When it was morning again and she found me downstairs trying to silently open the front door, she said nothing.
Now, we still say nothing. She’s still cutting, still chopping. I’m listening.
Opeyemi Rasak Oyadiran is a Nigerian poet and short story writer. She has works published on Expound, Nantygreens, Praxis, and the SankofaMag Chapbook. She is an alumnus of the 2018 Purple Hibiscus Creative Writing Workshop. She is 25 years old, lives and writes from Nigeria.