Okwudili Nebeolisa

BECAUSE 

Because I was not certain if my mother

was getting any better, if the pain 

was abating, if the swelling

was receding, if she was sleeping better 

at night, especially because 

we lived on different continents,

the guilt did not miss me. Sometimes, I hoped

it would and nursed a fresh guilt for hoping. 

I just wanted her to talk about the things

she would have talked about if she didn’t

have cancer. I wanted to hear

what it was like haggling prices for pieces of beef

at the market, tasting the garri 

before deciding to buy, exchanging jokes

with the sellers so they would bring down the price. 

I just wanted to know there was still 

the possibility of us talking 

about other things that wasn’t the thing

that might eventually do her in. 

OPEN WINDOWS

My dear, leave the windows open, let in

the light; I’m not feeling well today.

Maybe it’s the rain. My father, in his last days,

disliked this kind of day, would stay

in bed and drink hot ginger tea

to warm his heart; my father who 

in the harshest harmattan would head out

to his yam farm. My dear, please hold my hand,

I cannot seem to stand on my own.

Chemo has undone my bowels;

I have to visit the toilet again.

All my meals will get cold; if I eat,

I may have to find someone to get me

out of the bed, walk me to the bathroom

and then get me back to the bedroom.

Everyone keeps saying I haven’t come

to the end and I can only wonder about

the deficiencies of their best intents.

Do they not think I may want to rest

like my father, who struggled in bed,

who when I hurried in to save his life, said

I should allow him to die? Do they not think

that while I kneel before my bed, praying

day in day out, mumbling to myself, I may

be trying to unravel the code to life with the hope

that I will ironically find that of death?

THE JOKE

Out of frustration at our complacency

with disorder, my mother liked to joke 

that a day would come when she

would not be around to make sure

that dinner had been taken out of the fridge to thaw, 

to wash my father’s clothes, to wake me

every morning to prepare for work.

I still remember the night I came home 

to an unusually quiet house, 

the sitting room empty, the two candles

on my mother’s altar casting long shadows

of the ceiling fan on the walls

and on the sofa, vaguely implying

that it had not been long since my mother

and sister finished saying their night devotion.

In her room, my sister was trying to smother her sobbing,

probably pressing her face into her pillow,

while my mother tried to console her:

Even though the doctors had labeled the growth 

in her thigh as cancer, my mother said,

it did not mean she was going to die.

There, in the darkness of my sister’s bedroom

while my mother told her to stop crying, 

I could already imagine the house 

without our mother in it: the sitting room 

littered with my books, my brother’s shoes,

my father’s newspapers, all of us unable to sleep,

the house a mango savagely eaten to its kernel.