because days roll
off the sleeves of your shirt
and turn you into a cloudy night,
you learnt not to forget the sun
that burn your skin in a hot desert,
where your legs
touch the dark memories buried
beneath them.

you don’t tell a storm how to
break a home, you wait at midnight
to see how its light cuts
into your mother’s body,
teaching you how to gather the pieces
of her flesh.

and still, you don’t know how to
peel the yellow juice out of mango fruit.
only that you know
how to cut the language on your tongue
into different layers of sorrow.

here, you are
becoming a wild bird, flying in-between
the cluster of black trees.

– Yahuza Abdulkadir