SUGAR CUBES || Ibiteye Overcomer
Ballot boxes are metaphors for sugar cubes:
Dazzling, inviting, brides of anthills.
Glazed cartons holding frail fragments
of truth, justice, sweetness, of anthills.
Brazen walls of power that makes their builders vulnerable,
or is it the builders that make themselves vulnerable?
Could it be that between the petulant layers of history
and the creamy strands of change,
brittleness is being used as cement?
Ballot boxes are metaphors for sugar cubes:
Bright, luminous,
dissolving on the tongues of thugs and grey-haired godfathers.
Dissolving into nothingness.
This land swallows colors and spits out shadows.
Feeble legs walk on corridors of power with
walking sticks,
while youthful lips are forced to mold into silence
and writhe beneath the whispers of fear.
Threnodies of the sixties on replay,
withered policies of the seventies on display,
masses left to do nothing but pray.
Yet, every morning, I stand by my window and watch
as the sun rises,
as it ignites hope in me.
A hope that one day, we’ll rise in our youthful agility,
flex our fingers
and rip out the brittleness in our sugar cubes,
that we’ll repair the creaky staircases of power
and climb up to leadership,
that doggedly, without compromise,
we’ll chase the anthills away.
BIO
Ibiteye Overcomer is a twenty-year-old Nigerian. She is an avid reader and a poet who uses poetry as a means to express her views and thoughts about pressing matters with ease. You will find her on Instagram @bimolaovercomer.
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