Two Seasons | Poetry | Ewa Gerald Onyebuchi

A poem by Ewa Gerald Onyebuchi published by Pawners Paper Literary Magazine. Click to read.

Two Seasons 

there were two seasons.

first: my brother walked into a wormhole and never returned 

second: a door leading to a mirror

I scribbled the names of my 

loved ones and waited for the spaces to birth their whispers

what's the sound of language beneath a frozen lake?

what's the sense in a war that strips a city of its wings?

a man strides into a room full of voices and scours the wall

for his ancestors who traded freedom for a home under water

once, I held up my hands to the rain and begged it to eat the scars

the aspens know when to give up old things, when to let their leaves relish the earth

but my silence is a stain recycled through time

there were two seasons.

first: a thirst that crawled on the skin

then: a pride reduced to pellets of shame

my grandfather was flung into a war his feeble mind couldn't comprehend 

Bursting with youthful zest, he cocked a gun and ducked flying grenades and bullets

years later his mind was mangled; the pores awaken to distant echoes,

the cry of pain, the smell of hunger

the ghost of a country that never was.

last night, two black birds landed on my window sill,

one of them had my father's firm stare, the other my mother's meekness

their silence—a key unlocking ancient gates

there are two seasons.

first: the wind, piping the dead back home 

second: a sodden earth bleeding into an empty canvass.

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Ewa Gerald Onyebuchi is an Igbo storyteller from Nigeria. He has been published in Isele, Decolonial Passage, Uncanny, temz review and elsewhere. He was long listed in the 2023 Brigitte Poirson short story and the Abubakar Gimba Prize for creative nonfiction.

Twitter handle: @OnyebuchiEwa

Picture: Pexel