Agarau Adedayo writes

Midnight Memoirs:

We'd hear sounds of aching missiles

Banging the door of our happiness

Against the lock of divine anguish.

We'd hear the moan of painful demise

Fainting tick by tick as the wind blows beyond

To bury voices in the equator of a silent world.

We'd hear war sing of boredom where

Grounds cry for bloodstains.

Behind our home, hue of grim

Would cover the naked eyes of the land.

We would not sleep.

We'd sniff the dirty smells of  death

And see flood of bodies on our streets.

Bodyless heads will be planted in gutters

For in due time, they'd be the relics: the map

That leads our children to their homes.

We'd pant our life through the nostrils of terror

Painting our fear with the colour of a faded faith

Leaving the shadows of distuned hopes to fall on it.

We would not sleep.

We'd remember this story every night

When the scars of sleeplessness

Stings the pains of a looted peace in our vessels.

We'd stand to sing dirges whose lines die

In the middle of passionate rhythms.

We'd sit to cry for the sons who sailed beneath,

For the daughters who strolled beyond our views,

For the mothers who wailed for all

For those searching for tears with torches.

We would not sleep.