REMEMBER

CHINUA EZENWA-OHAETO

Is it not great how good we think we are at remembering?

remembrances: remember. Remember the day we buried a lizard

on our playground and bore a guilt heavy as killing a conscience.

Remember the day we hid our aunt’s canes

after we broke plates in the kitchen

or the day we climbed into the deep freezer

because we wanted to feel how

it snowed in the movies. Remember?

Remember how this language is not even ours and I’m using it.

I want to understand everything and how it takes

so much of our memories to become suited dogs.

At school, I walked into a history book on the shelf

and found nothing about my navel: not even a trace of how we lived.

The rivers we own were mapped for us, though we have been the roots.

The following day, the teacher took what remained on the shelf

and burned and said we have to start thinking away from the past.

On the teacher turning back, I saw a long scar on his arm:

a bridge, sort of, which snaked up into his sleeve.

You see, at that moment, I wondered how a bridge couldn’t lead.

After classes, mother sat me down, gave me a lunch

and said a day will come for me to understand the

wrinkles wrapping her skin, face and legs.

Thereafter she said to me: never forget. Never forget.

CHINUA EZENWA-OHAETO

(@ChinuaEzenwa) is from Owerri-Nkworji in Nkwerre, Imo state, Nigeria and grew up between Germany and Nigeria. He is always grateful to the poets who influence him. He has won the Association of Nigerian Author’s Literary Award for Mazariyya Ana Teen Poetry Prize, 2009; Speak to the Heart Inc. Poetry Competition, 2016. He became a runner-up in the Etisalat Prize for Literature, Flash fiction, 2014. He won the Castello di Duino Poesia Prize for an unpublished poem, 2018 which took him to Italy. He was the recipient of New Hampshire Institute of Art’s 2018 Writing Award, and also the recipient of New Hampshire Institute of Art’s 2018 scholarship to MFA Program. In 2019, he was the winner of the Sevhage/Angus Poetry Prize and second runner-up in the 5th Singapore Poetry Contest. His works have appeared in Lunaris Review, AFREADA, Poet Lore, Rush Magazine, Frontier, Palette, Malahat Review, Southword Magazine, Vallum, Mud Season Review, Bakwa Magazine, Salamander, Strange Horizons, One, Ake Review, Crannòg, and elsewhere.