BODY
“And after the accident.
One man would say to another
Don’t move her, she might be bleeding internally”
what they didn’t say /cause they didn’t know /is that the lifeless body /was a long-distance runner /and it preferred coffee to tea /read poems over scrambled eggs /never danced cause it thought it couldn’t /skipped meals cause it thought it was growing fatter /refused to join the choir /was afraid of making new friends /kept old ones at arms length /planted wildflowers /was proclaimed barren /stabbed twice /by the same man it refused to divorce /and was on its way to tell him/ it has a body growing inside it
Ogunkoya Samuel is a Nigerian physiotherapist. His poems have been published in Kalahari Review, AfricanWriter and Best New African poets anthology 2017. He writes from Lagos.
Minute Magazine 