the whole lot cramping the tiny backyard of your parent’s house,
drinking & exchanging tips, raising topics like marriage & investment.
the men patting your father’s back, encouraging his first steps,
the women aiding your mother’s recovery in the inner room,
uncles, aunties, & cousins setting aside grudges to drag out
the largest pots from storage, rouse hearths marking occasions
of birth & rebirth, the whole act of communal yielding on the
account of the grown & growing, the seeded and the seeding.
people, a row of front-porches bearing similar tropes,
memory recordings of kids growing up so fast, eager to leave already.
people out on the coldest nights, gathered around fire pits,
burning branches off the family tree, wondering if they’ve wandered too far.
people combating defined geographies, the best judgement of others,
yet would offer you more than a standing space whenever you appear in history.
Chiagoziem Jideofor is Igbo and Queer. Her poems have appeared or are scheduled to appear in POETRY, Reunion: The Dallas Review, Obsidian, The Lincoln Review, Variant Lit, ANOMLY, the minnesota review, Michigan Quarterly Review, berlin lit, Yaba Left Review, Passengers Journal, Superstition Review,
Rigorous, Spectrum Literary Journal, Untitled: Voices, and so on.