A FAMILY HISTORY

Inside the room, the mothers sat round you
like stones circling a small fire. Lines of confusion 
etched on their faces, they sat with their 
heads in their hands & legs crossed—bodies shaking.

Their shadows touched across your body like meridians 
across earth. My mother was part of them. 
I watched her hurry out of the house disappearing 
like a moving lamplight, on her way here.
From the terror of her screams, I learnt in nine months, 
God would sprout a seed of creation through your body. 

So in the room, regret necessitated across all of their faces 
like lotus leaves across the face of water. Your mother’s fire 
ceased to burn, long ago, they repeated. You & your siblings, 
splattered across cardinal points in the raw stages
of your lives, learning how to burn in the world. 
Your father trended to your clamors with his absence.

They questioned what led you to that. Even though you were silent,
I assumed you desired for love. To give & receive it in the deep 
of your life—through softness, like a baby's skin. 
I was unsure if you loved him, the man who planted himself 
in your belly. So we kept him within the silence in our discussions 
when we talked. 

My mother said we could have been siblings; 
we appeared in her dream as triplets—before the dispatch
into this world from our mothers’ carrying.

Towards the end of your mother's light, my mother had seen it again, 
something crashing against you in her sleep. But in the world, 
it crashed your mother into unliving. Later, when we met, 
we spoke with our eyes because there was nothing to say 
with our voices. 

It's been eight years & I have grown a mustache now.
Your son calls me uncle—I look at him, young as I am. 
I am old enough to be his father. 

Abdulkareem Abdulkareem (he/him) is a Nigerian writer and linguist. He is the author of  ‘Loss is a Door’ selected by Kwame Dawes and Chris Abani for the New-Generation African Poets, a Chapbook Box Set (Akashic Books, 2025). He is a member of the Frontier's Collective. His works appear in the National Museum of Language, POETRY, Transition Magazine, Waxwing, Poetry Wales, Uncanny Magazine, LOLWE, Southern Humanities Review, ISELE, Shallow Tales Review, Nigeria News Direct, & elsewhere. He lives in Tuscaloosa where he is studying for an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Alabama.