New Wine in Old Skin | Titilayo Matiku

(cover photograph direction: Ene Ochayi)

The traders are shedding their colours, on the ground,

in heaps.

You will find saturated men here – loaded with debts and

sacks.

Katangua market will chew you up and spit you

out, into the waiting hands of the one who thinks a

breadcrumb

is better than none.

You will flow like a steady, slow stream of indecision past

pleading eyes, and pitch your tent with triumphant glee.

Newness

and freshness

is an aberration here, it must be worn or at least torn. They

call this place the

market of darkness, because the sellers don’t know what they

sell and the buyers don’t know what they buy. Their secrets

are hidden in bales, in stacks, in layers of people’s thoughts,

in nuances.

And even egregious innuendos. Here two adult men are sold

at the rate

of a comatose

Mitsubishi car and bought with the price of a bicycle spindle.

What you desire is not what you get, the only things that

touch your hands are the ones you know how to

bargain for.

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Titilayo Matiku

is a lover of nature and music. She enjoys simple little things like walking in the rain, listening to music, watching cartoons and painting her toe nails. However, her greatest pleasure comes from creating a world where she is the literal Adam giving names to her characters and designing their fate with the tip of her pen. Her work has been featured in Umuofia Arts and Books Festival Anthology and Voyage of 90 years with Kongi. Handles: Twitter—titilayodm  Instagram: tdarmie.