In the photograph, my father is wearing a white shirt,
the collar slightly turned, the way the breeze remembers him.
They say I walk like him,
one foot folding into the next as if it knows a rhythm I don’t.
My mother says he loves to whistle while washing his hands,
the water catching the tune before letting it go.
In church, they say, he pressed a note into my palm,
said, ga nye onyinye–go & give offering.
But Onyinye is my sister’s name, the youngest,
her small hands opening like hibiscus in morning rain.
So, I carried the note straight to her,
thinking he meant her, thinking she was the offering.
Igbo has many rooms for a word,
one doorway opening into another, & another.
Onyinye: gift, offering, the child herself,
the name a prayer folds into sound.
I do not remember my father’s voice,
only the quiet he left in every room.
Only the way a word can mean
what you give away, & what you keep.
Ókólí Stephen Nonso (he/him) is a Nigerian writer and graduate student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Indianapolis Review, Ellipsis Literature & Art, Good River Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, Feral Journal, AdelaideLiterary Magazine, Brittle Paper, The Shallow Tales Review, Olney Magazine, Tuck Magazine, and Ofi Press, among others.
His debut poetry collection, The Road is a Body, is forthcoming with Felis Catus Press. He is the 2024 winner of the Muse Journal Award for Best Literary Artist of the Year. His other honors include first runner-up in the Fresh Voice Foundation Poetry Contest, third prize in the Akuko Magazine Inaugural Prize for Poetry (2021), the 2025 English Department Achievement Scholarship Award winner at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and co-winning the 2026 Collins Family Endowed Scholarship. He is also a 2026 Longleaf Scholar. In recognition of his growing literary impact, he was profiled in Who’s Who of Emerging Writers 2021 by Sweetycat Press. Say hello on X @OkoliStephen7.