How easy is it to belong somewhere in mind when displaced in body?
I shocked my mum once
when I professed with all confidence
that, Your home is not my own.
It was likely said off-hand, a throwaway comment because it was a sentiment so true as to be banal.
How can I be from somewhere that exists only in my memories and
when the trace of that place
is eradicated and replaced?
So Nigeria and I became estranged.
My mouth no longer moves in a way that displays my mother’s tongue
and I become ashamed of my long and unpronounceable name;
made strange
by my inability to answer questions about its shape.
What is the colour of shame?
Is it the subtle reddish hue given to my brown skin
when blood rushes to my face at the thought of uttering ewa, garri and dodo
after being asked
at the front of my white teacher’s class
what did you have for dinner last?
Or perhaps it is no colour at all,
but a grey-wash that blankets over the what was bright
and does not allow light
to expose what is it that gifts such intense memories.
Shame is sitting in the corner third of Grandma’s parlour bar with a severed sense of belonging to the rest of the inside.
What gives rise to the shame that forms in the bottom of my stomach?
Does it begin in the sound of familial laughter
as I fumble and fall
over the phonetics of the language that used to be mine.
Or is it in the look of surprise
in my doubly conscious eyes
when I walk into a room?
Formed at the juncture of aspiration and devastation
when the ways I know do not fit the social norms
and I, being myself, have failed to conform.
Adekunmi Olatunji 