Portrait of a girl as bruise-weather by Nwodo Divine
- Editor
- Nov 9
- 1 min read
your name  folded in the mouth of a wasp
   father said silence makes a better daughter
a door unhinged itself from time    you stood behind it
  wearing your skin like smoke
memory was a zoo of lightless cages
  & every night your body
 grew another keyhole
  no key
he filled the room with winter when it wasn’t even god’s season
you became  a lowercase prayer
  punched into the typewriter of his hands
          your laughter forgotten in the mouth of the fan
outside: sparrows arguing with glass
   inside: your shadow bleeding its alphabet across the floor
and still
  the mirror refused to believe you were ever a girl
       it only showed you  a field of beds  on fire
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Nwodo Divine is a Nigerian writer and editor.