STONES

STONES by Gbenga Adesina

Borno, a state in North Eastern Nigeria

The mothers would rub their daughters into a gleam,
one little skein at a time with hands that were
libraries of all the touches—under noon lights
or the unwisdom of nights—they had known.
They would do it calm.

The unhurried grace of a river pouring itself into itself.
Then the artistry will hasten, henna patterns like
pressed flowers spidering up their daughters ‘arms,
whispering tales of rhythm,
molding daughters’ eyes, daughters’ faces
into faces that were illuminated water.
And it wouldn’t matter, at least for that moment,
that the land beneath them was a loan—a camp,
a hiding in the bush, a rest as they fled the city.
It wouldn’t matter that these daughters could
be taken tomorrow, herded into the nights.
They would bend and weave into dances
that were incarnates of the ones their mothers once danced.
In this homecoming that wasn’t a homecoming,
they would weave their arms and waists into homage,
a pulse.
Until you couldn’t tell what it was in the air
that soothed the night:
The fidelity of fingers that coerced
such kindness out of drums
Or the evening’s lease of unyielding blue
ringing the edge where the fathers gathered
and watched, like sculptures, with silent
new eyes,
(one saying in his mind):
I want us to be stones,
here, caught in the pirate art of love,
chiseled by time’s impermanence itself
into granites soft as the eyes.