ANKLETS
My mother told me I was born with anklets
gaudy, beautiful things
forged of false surrender.
Like every woman before me,
They strapped iron links to their shine,
stretching heavy into the earth’s bosom,
tethered to the whims and folly of the men who came before me.
Then they set me loose
and called me a free woman.
My mother taught me how to live in ignorance
to pretend my anklets were made of gold,
and the chime of their trailing chain
nothing but the sound of love.
For what else, if not love,
would ground a bird
whose wings ache
only to soar?
My mother
she is a time traveller
with no particular destination.
She carved time capsules
out of the living flesh of her daughters
and bid them stay in place
With muffled shrouds of her love.
Her daughters held her chains still.
She forgot her need to wander.
My mothers’ anklets were not made of surrender
My mothers mother
linked her daughters chains with memories
and the resonance of duty
She did not teach her ignorance.
For my mothers mother was a placid lake with deep burrows.
she buried calmly any hints of dissonance In the music of her anklets.
Her chains were long
Buried deep she thought them nonexistent
But my mothers chains They were shorter
Her generation was adorned with brighter lengths that shimmered
Lengthens and shortens at the whims
Of a man’s fickle heart
So they taught themselves the art of forgetting
My mother told me I was born with anklets
Gaudy beautiful things forged to sing the world into order
But here they lay unpolished
Their bells broken at birth
Their song stilled
Only their chains stretching at the whims of unchained monsters.
Calling Home
after all the years away
Mother calls from the deeps,
curled at the edge of that land’s healing cracks where now, the trees shed fruit with no prompting,
where Sister’s bloodied feet once painted love between the cloaking robes of monsters.
Where, beneath Mother’s watchful eyes, she spun over broken bones called Father.
She calls, she calls, says,“Come home, daughter.”
Home, to the taste of smoke on Grandmama’s soup,
the sweat that beads on her hilltop forehead, the smile that stains that craggy hard face when Father brings his broken laughs home.
Home
that belonged to a girl who saw monsters not beneath the bed but spinning past in Sister’s tear-soaked skin,
bloodied feet piercing the bones of Father’s love and care.
Home
that flows between nausea and nostalgia, the feel of stone and sand between toes.
Stone is stone and sand always sand but the sands of home, they hold the imprint of memory,
Of a 5-year-old palm pressed beneath the scorching red of a termite’s home, a 5-year-old tongue tasting what remains of the ancient one’s hold, learning the difference between concrete and clay.
Home smells of Mother’s miyan kuka, no fish or meat to wash the stickiness down,
only Mother’s voice carrying the dark away with tales of Bayajidda, Zulke, and Alhaji Imam in the light of a single candle on a bed in a mud house built on memories.
Memories of Brother, who once carried water for Mother on his back, the same way he hauled years of Father’s dreams to a country where faces stared at his melanin-spiked tone and learned to call it home.
To crank the heat up to 40, 45, inhale deeply when the new snow falls and try to remember when snow used to be red and winter was harmattan.
Now Brother plucks cherries from fruit stands, cherry that held no memory of sour hands or wild trees
Cherry that is too sweet, too soft, and smiles, swallows, and calls on Sister.
Sister who dances now on waves, where the sea salt sweeps the blood from her soles and seals into the wounds the broken bones of Father.
Her stamping feet screams over the waves and cover the thousand voices of Mother rising from the deeps,
the crags from that once crumbling pit at the edges of what used to be home for a cared soul who loved Mother.
Calling, Calling, Come home, daughter.
The Hive
I want to learn this world like a beloved book
Seek its every hidden crevice between the eyes of mother
The hands of daughter
Between a wife’s parted thighs that form the gateway to God’s greatest gift
I want to write this world into paper
Soak it in waters pulled from the hope that lives
In a first time mother
The hope that presses her hands against a swollen belly
Shares her body with alien life that could
take and take and take
swallow her whole and from her body to her mind
Take every inch every piece
drink it down and know
Know the meaning of love
And the love of meaning
Of knowing
Of letting go
Of your self
Of every part that makes you
Of becoming Maman amra
Matar Ahmad
Your being subsumed within the hive mind
That is wife Mother
I want to take the tears of daughter
Roll it within the black threads of duty
To create the blackest ink
That drips with expectations
I’ll call it Yar fari
Use it to draw this world to paper
Draw the blurring line that separates
Mother from daughter
That entrusts a child between frail arms
And calls it love
That cradles fear like newly found clay in a children’s playground
Rolls it between the fingers of an overeager child
And name it art
Lets it twist and fall in on itself
Try to mould its little wet handles into works of art
To make itself into art
Use Yar fari to paint art across the stained face of this world
Let daughter be daughter
Then sister
Before she subsumed into the hive
And become one with wife
With mother
I want to learn this funny world
That breaks before it ends you in all the wrong places
Chew it softly between clenched teeth
Like a
delicious soup spiced with maggots
Roll it under my tongue
Taste its fragrance
And spits it out
At your feet
And cook a better meal
To feed my cravings.
Habiba Malumfashi is a writer, podcaster, project manager and curator. She is the programs Officer and coordinator of the open arts development foundation, a creative hub for artists and writers in Kaduna. Her work revolves around womanhood, resilience and the inherent feminist ethos of northern Nigerian cultures. Her writings can be found on The Kalahari review, Beittle Paper, Ayamba Litcast among others.