DEATH Poem: Colours and Smoke, by Mohammed Salihu

If rain is a leaking prayer
that washes the questions of yesterday’s pain,
then what is fire?
Does it burn today’s scars inside out
so tomorrow wears a new skin?

Beyond the womb of soil
that cradles bodies before their time,
beyond the umbilical cord
of a mother’s last lullaby,
beyond the slaving trees
that bow to the master wind,
lies the tunnel of my throat,
leaking a boiling scream
for the father who never came home,
for the brother swallowed by fire,
for the hands I once held
now buried beneath a sky of silence.

Who watched the rivers choke
on the ashes of their own children,
who heard the streets wail
beneath the boots of war?

And unlike the breath of nations
who swallow their acrid grief
into the belly of silence,
this land finds relief—
purging its suffering
from the casket of its past
down to the curve of its broken smile.

Leaving me choking on the dust of war,
leaving me sinking into the hole of exile.
And what can be deeper than a hole
in the heart of a land
if not a grave cradling its people?

If trials are the gravity
that drowns a nation in despair,
then love is the buoyancy
that stops us from calling the ground home.

In twirling years to come,
when the ink of our destinies fades into dust,
will we be colours, remembered and cherished?
Or will we be smoke, whispered and forgotten?