A Bridge that Leads to Nowhere

I am a father again, and one day

My son, Isaiah, says “Daddy. I want to be a man” stretching his gum

“Oh, you are already a man,” I said, figuring he’s had too much chocolate.

That night, he didn’t speak again, and I saw him go into his room.

The next morning, his blood unfurls and slips in through the door. It unfurls on the carpet.

Then it wakes me up — it caresses my head, my hair and down to my soles. It lifts me up and put my pants on. I followed his blood — through the rug, the verandah, and the door — until the blood pokes at him. I find him with different scars — a knife through his arm, his legs, his chest and the parts his moan can only reveal.

Then he says, “Father, I am now a man.”

I feel his breath, on my chest, coming and going like the winter sun.

“You were a man yesterday” between grit and gush

“Not yesterday. Not without the scars” his penthouse lid is closing and his fingers turning grey.

Foolish me, he had seen the scars under my sleeves the night before, like a bridge. A burnt bridge that leads to where childhood begins:

A scar — when I was a kid and I burned my ring finger in a plastic factory, learning how to be a man. How to be strong.

A scar — when I hung on a noose after a failed result, reading and providing for the house: being a man. Then I hid the stretch marks in the cistern.

A scar — when all my childhood memories topple on themselves and gather into a minute silence and I realise the serrated scar down my spine could kill.

My child sees those scars, and he inflicted it upon himself — perhaps he shouldn’t have, and with time it would have grown on him like a dead tulip.

I place my scars beside his and I saw it taking the shape of my adulthood and his infancy, they form a bridge that leads to nowhere.

I then count our scars with the sand on the shore and I see the sand biting the ocean.

He died, and still, I see him bleeding from his scars.

Adepoju Isaiah Gbenga

is a teen poet, dramatist and an aspiring novelist. In 2020, he was longlisted for the Africa Writers’ Award, which held in Luzaka, Zambia. His works are published or forthcoming on Mystery Publishers Anthology, Kenya; Ebedi International Writers’ Residency, The Shallow Tales Review (Issue 28), League of Writers Publication, Ibadan; Writers’ Egg Magazine, Bristol, UK; African Writers Review, Nigeria Review, Nigeria Review Chapbook, Opinion Nigeria Newspaper and elsewhere. He’s an editor and advocate at Tribesmen House. He’s also an editor and weekly interviewer at Writers’ Global Movement. He’s the Osun state co-coordinator for Praxis Hangouts and Hilltop Creative Arts Foundation, Minna. He hopes to publish his award-winning play, Eniobasin, in 2021.

Cover image credit: Doyin Deji