Because my mother's joy is enough, a country names her a valley of forgotten prayers. & the brave raccoons are still dying because they too have not found a home like me to call safety. There is no sad history than taking a soul away from where it is meant to flourish. A week ago, I visited a morgue, & inside—all the humans are seated together with the dead, waving at young enough photos plastered on every wall. Nine Hundred million pieces of photographs, of electric ants, & the windows not knowing what goes out or through them. All posing lifelessly like a small house of flames. Until now, I still think of the scenes welling up gently, lights refilling every path at each remembrance, not uttering a word in which there won't be neither me nor home holding a little rose. Just watching everything beautiful growing backwards into a city of flamingos. & here I am licking their wounds to cover their lies already structured to burn my voice. I do not want the giraffes to eat me up at once unless the mountain falcons say otherwise. Whenever I run to the village hills to hide, what I long for is not only how to forget the faces that wanted me dead. The distance between the sun and stars is not very far, when the rain stops — everything going into extinction only becomes more honourable than the cemetery itself. But what we say after the snow has quieted, blessings and curses, even death becomes a language for resurrection in the presence of molting leaves. It is true I have never seen God face to face, but I bet you I know what it means to stand face to face with fire in a country of unfinished bodies. On a slow marine boat moving the birds away, a child fills his mouth with pieces of mercury, to pollinate the waters from drowning both the boat, and his mother's grandchildren, all sailing to an unknown destiny. To know the origin of underground waters, one must learn to sing with whatever the day's bygones have left for the living, and those still missing. What I mean is that not every harvest is a research engine while looking for a way to escape a place that not only kills your dreams but all of it about you. It is night again & I am still here staring at the rocks where the lights once loved now stand ruined completely. Listening to the stillness of heaps of a boy's tender name now married to pains, like desert call of flying horses. The children with their friends pouring sands, the sands with their heats coiling their ribs into nothing. The shadows they saved out of lagoons, a lagoon gathered into a restaurant only popular with making meats from infants blood and ashes. I know someday, all the ravens and the flowers will come seeking a new home in my body, the way my country has done with all the hearts it has already swallowed with no trace. No matter how much you water the fruits and leaves, the tree still withers. Yet, even the road itself you see is not alone, only no longer the same as the old. & to you flowers that made me, to you home that drowns me each time it seems life is growing again out of this body, my hands are lifted in honor of your name in this valley of thunder.

Onyishi Chukwuebuka Freedom ( age: 25, he / him), is of Igbo descent. And a graduate of English and Literary Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He is a poet, essayist, music enthusiast and Publicity Secretary Muse (no. 51). His work have appeared in or forthcoming from, amongst other places, The Eye To The Telescope: (non)binaries, The Port Harcourt Literary Review, Wherein The World Magazine, The Biochar Magazine, The Nine Muses Review, Poets in Nigeria initiative, The Muse journal, and the winner PIN's yearly Anthology Best Poet for March, 2024.

Authors Notes: Growing up in my little village in Nsukka, I witnessed firsthand the power of community. Poverty and food shortages constantly threatened to pull us apart, but it was our communal love and sharing that kept us going. Neighbors always found ways to support one another, whether through shared meals or acts of kindness, and this spirit of unity is what inspired the heart of my story. It reflects how love and solidarity can create an unbreakable bond, even amidst hardship.