Tapioca

before you write letters
on old leaflets of your skin,
you have spent nights
breaking and bleeding in water,
calling for god in all the languages
mother didn't teach.

writing letters on old leaflets
of your skin has broken you
into different countries
with milk flowing in sugar.

you're poetry flowing
in a cup of muddled abasha,
a ray of sunlight on gloomy mornings.
even after akara jilted you,
you will still write stories of
women that died flowing—
firmly on hot oil.

A 100 words cannot paint
you into a poem because
you're a canvas full of emotions
speaking life into our hungry hearts.

— Abdulhameed Ridwan O