A boy’s plea to a lost home

Bullets fed a young lad’s body when I hid myself under charred bones of my people, we could only see peace in the stories my grandmother told when sanity was still by her side, she could fiction reality into a charming tale. Even though she smelt like war and bullets, she still knitted her country’s anthem to her heart. This is not a tale of a patriotic woman who died as humus for the soil, but simply a plea to let a wandering soul lie peacefully at my backyard.

If only life was a song sang by mother when my father came back with his limbs complete and a head on his body with his uniform hung behind his bruised back . My family is a mindless holocaust of a barbaric nation who spells peace in the letters of protests.

 My father left with fear glued to his mind, he left a wife with fear of her husband coming back in letters he wrote to formalize his good-byes, my mother became a canvass of pain holding my father in myriads of memories.

When death hung under my throat; I could taste its stinging taste. Oh lord……., I beseech you, those words were strangers to my tongue. Who knew lord when I worshipped the bullets that dug holes in my body; I held tears in my heart not ready to flood this burning country. I’m still alive waiting to be burned by the flames of a lost country. So now tell me how to define a country with lost homes I lived in?

Fatima Abdulwahab is a 16 year old poet and essayist. Her hobbies are writing and also reading. She enjoys the company of her family and friends. She was long listed in the African writers award competition 2023 and also the winner of the Arts lounge magazine ( the greens we left behind edition).