“Rippling Song Of Scars“ by Chinecherem Enujioke
Chinecherem Enujioke(she/her/hers), TPC XV, is an emerging black poet from Nigeria. She is an undergraduate at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, where she studies Human Anatomy. Her works have appeared in PoetrycolumnND and World Voices Magazine. She is the Research Editor of The Moulder, a print magazine that publishes girl-child related issues in Nigeria. She tweets @VCenujioke and on Instagram, she is @vcenujioke.
A Word from the Author:
Two years ago, a dear friend confided in me about the seething hatred she harbored after enduring violation by her husband. My heart went out to her, and in that moment, I felt an unbreakable bond with all the young girls in my country who have no voice, whose pain etches deep into their children. This poem serves as a prayer for them, or perhaps as a means for them to inhale new life, to break free from their stifled whispers. I penned this poem not to claim comprehension but to assure them that I bear witness to their struggles and echo the same words they utter, for the sake of my country, for the sake of all those who perpetuate the wars they wage within themselves.
Rippling Song of Scars
For every child, surviving abuse.
my therapist warns that my hate will consume me/so, i begin from childhood
may the grief of my innocence bear me witness/i write from the chords of an
eight-year-old/one who knew voices that did not speak/one who knew hands
whose coarseness ripped her off her innocence/she had watched the blue sky and
saw it grey/she had sought the rains and each time they came/the drops brought
dust/the one that tastes like the brown of rusted zinc/i write from the chords of an
eighteen-year-old/who after ten years still sees dreams/each night
begging the cosmos for amnesia/where i am/there are no ripples in the
water/the calm intrigues me/i put my feet in the calm stream/ and forget how
still waters run deep/that its depth may take my dreams away/and like
God/breathe in me anew/that where my faith fails/fate may be on hold or do its
worst/that, is the only way i can have amnesia/and not forget the face of my
mother/i write from the chords of a mother/whose voice is an octave that leaves
cracks in pillars and walls/like the stroke of koboko on the succulent bum of a
maiden/each crack with a scar/each scar with a story/of how hands that broke
her walls live free from bars/my mother tells me to be patient/that all troubled
waters will calm/that even shards of a broken mirror are all mirrors/so, the night
i heard that his cerebrospinal fluid had gorged the thirst of the lustered tars
i became/when he breathed his last/i took my first/fifty years of terror breaks
now/she greys into her scars/she fades like the dream i no longer have.
