Portrait of a girl as bruise-weather by Nwodo Divine

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.