Bitter Kola
written by: Olalekan Hussein
@Olaleka07992108
Where are those beautiful days?
When children pluck their happiness at night
Listening to folklores under the mango tree
smiling at them like an aesthetic bud of a pristine flower?
Where are those beautiful days?
When bothers groove jauntily in our local village
Leisure with fresh fetched palm wine
From the elongated iroko tree
And playing àyó to erase sepulcher from their turbulent hearts?
Where are those beautiful days?
When sisters become cutlery of dance
Lacerating our moroseness with ballads and dances?
Those days we have sold in return for naira
When Moon and sun would smile at us
With their glittering teeth capturing old women’s hearts in their husbands’ bed.
Those days have now been exchanged with isolation
And nightingale carries our ecstasies
To zephyr, blowing away our joys into ashes and smokes.
Our lives become a bitter kola placed on a baby’s mouth
And become a sore wound in a baby’s heart.
When shall these days visit-
Us in our abodes?
Because, this love is deteriorating
And these souls are melting like candles?
- Bitter Kola - September 23, 2021
