By : Sulaimon Taiwo kamaldeen
You never told me you would vanish
not even a whisper cracked the silence of your leaving.
You slipped away like smoke dissolving into the ceiling of heaven,
and left me clutching air, searching for the echo of your last breath.
We never spoke of how my days would bend without you.
We never measured this year together
this year where my birthday now arrives like a storm with no shelter.
My celebration always began before the day itself:
the market walks where peppers (Atá ròdò) glistened like drops of blood,
the green leaves ( éfo sókó) trembling with dew as though they knew your touch was near,
the smoked fish (ejá yiyán) with its body curved like prayer,
the ponmo, tender and unyielding, waiting to crunch between teeth.
All these treasures you gathered into a single pot,
and from your hands rose a aroma of belonging,
an aroma that drifted beyond our door
until strangers turned beggars at the aroma of your cooking.
How do I forget you, Maami?
The pepper bleeding red rivers onto the ancient stone grinder,
your knuckles tattooed with scars of labor,
your fingers tiny, tireless blades
slicing every seed until the earth itself seemed to sigh in gratitude.
Your food was never food;
it was scripture written in steam,
it was a covenant sealed by fire,
it was love, distilled into taste and placed on our tongues.
I have unfinished conversations with you that lives under my tongue.
Tomorrow is my day and you’ll not be there to straighten my collar, to scold the spice from my hand.
your laughter missing from the walls that used to shake when you stirred.
Perhaps, tonight, you will step into my dreams
walk barefoot across the river of sleep
and sit with me once more,
so I can ask how to carry joy on a broken back,
how to set a table when the host of love is gone.
We will always have unfinished questions, Maami.
How did you hold sorrow so quietly?
Which prayer stitched your wounds shut?
What secret did you whisper into the stew that made the world taste bearable?
Even the recipes feel incomplete without your hum between measures of salt.
Tonight I will stand in the hollow of your kitchen.
The pots will sit cold, but I will breathe them alive with memory.
I will cook in the shadow of your absence,
letting my tears salt the broth where your hands no longer reach.
And if the taste falters, forgive me
I am only a student in the cathedral of your fire.
On my birthday I’ll light a scent stick of tùrárí to the place you once sat,
and watch its flame tremble like your breath before you left.
I will eat slowly,
as though each bite carries the weight of your voice,
as though the pepper itself remembers your blessing.
Maami, sleep in that quiet meadow where pain cannot find you.
Visit me in the curl of steam, in the hush of dawn,
in the pepper’s fire, in the silence that suddenly sings your name.
Teach me still, even in death,
how to hold grief without drowning in it,
how to carve light from the darkness you left behind.
Until then, I will carry your absence like a bowl too heavy for my arms,
but I will not let it fall.
Because even in death, Maami,
you are the feast that still feeds me.
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Awesome piece