Our Little Home

Our Little Home

What memories do this title bring?
Perhaps of love and laughter
Hugs, kisses, peace and togetherness
Does it also remind you of things
that did not break, yet are not whole
Listen to my heart breaking tale
a tale of pain, pain too heavy to utter

I was raised in the family of fight
and incessant parental quarrels
Neighbours always gather
close friends always wonder
And foes joyfully crack nuts of mockery
As people do to a newly mad man
chasing after smell of fart and flit of flies
But what Joy do they derive in laughing
at other people's pain, at other people's tears?

When the demon enters our little home
Daddy and mummy's tongue become launchers
Launching missiles and heart tearing bombs
Dumm! dumm! toaah! words-like-bombs
Explode tearing our little home apart-
Most times our pot of soup spills
Flooding the floor with edible tears
As mummy and daddy wrestle wild
Exchanging blows, blinding death blows







And we children of a breaking home
Turn sad speculators
Crying and begging with tears drilling down
Still and still the wrestlemania goes on
Most times my friends crack jokes
Painful jokes with the movies in our home
They laugh and scream demonstrating
the horror in my father's house

This horror and terror takes various shapes
Sometimes mummy throws daddy to the ground
And daddy holds mummy's neck hard
as men hold a fowl before putting a knife into its throat.
And we children of a dying mother
Turn sad speculators
Crying, pleading with tears dripping down

But do mummy and daddy not see
the shame they bring upon  us ?
Do they not see,do they not see
how hollow our feelings have become
Do they not see that our emotion
has become a farmland for truama
Do they not see that our hearts
Heave pain, pain too heavy to utter
Do they not know, when two elephants
wrestle the grasses bear the pain


Samuel Onyeche