Ajani Samuel Victor

When I Left Home

My father’s hut was a wandering albatross
It kept me aloft the roaring forties
And islands of a cruddy life for years
It’s wings was a canopy
That shielded my bald head
From the heat of failures
Like a towel around a sagging pendulum
It blinded my specks.

The road leading to our home
Had potholes and pitfalls
I fell countless times in the muds
Like a cart with no gag
But mum was always home
To pick me up from there
She would scrub me
With a sponge of care
And rinse my mess with
Her unfaltering love.
She said I was a meteor
That gilt above the earth.

When the day tucks in its luster
Beneath the grey sky
I ate from grandpa’s earthenware
Of wisdom
He hand-fed me the morsels
At the back of our yard
Whirling it around vegetables of
Axioms and proverbs
“Here is not your home,” he would say.

Until I left home,
I knew not lifes’ laughter isn’t
As sweet as grandma’s smile
(Grandma lives with the gods)
“Remember who you are”
Was my father’s motto
But I didn’t know until I
Ferried myself farther from
The grey head that taught me.

“No love in the streets”
Was written with an unfading
Ink across the door of my mother
I thought love was a person
I thought love was lost
Until my crying soul screamed
For it a thousand miles from home.