by Shitta Faruq Adémólá
Dry Season
I saw him sick only through the cracked door
my mother slid through with soiled sheets.
My grandfather was so small, skin blanketing bone.
He spent a silent summer in that sunroom
breathing dust and staring blank through
a peeling window frame out over his field:
corn silk blowing anxious as pigtails
hoping to be covered with clouds
heavy as a hand-sewn quilt,
waiting for the Michigan sky to split rain.
But all he saw was sky and sun.
He never knew what the kitchen was doing
with its flurry of skirts, chatter a simmering stew.
All he knew was that light, that empty sky.
He lay there and stared deep until he
separated the blues from that white heat.
That heat that scratched at the windowpanes
like a dust storm and dragged that weathered man out.
Melanie Figg is the author of the award-winning poetry collection, Trace (named one of the Best Indie Books of 2020 by Kirkus). She has won grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Maryland State Arts Council, and others. Her poems, personal essays, and book reviews are published or forthcoming in dozens of literary journals, including The Rumpus, Nimrod, The Iowa Review, and Conduit. Melanie teaches writing in the DC area and online. As a certified professional coach, she offers women’s writing retreats and works one-on-one with writers and others. www.melaniefigg.net.
Shitta Faruq Adémólá is a young Muslim Poet, Phone Photographer and Fiction Writer From Nigeria. His works appear or are forthcoming in Jalada Africa, The Kalahari Review, Third Estate Art, Rigorous Magazine, Chautaqua, Praxis Magazine, African Writers and elsewhere. He was a joint winner in the Shuzia PenProtest Contest, 2020; a second place winner in Naija Haiku Contest, 2020; and also a joint winner in PIN 10-DAY Poetry challenge (November 2020. He always believe Simi’s voice are always ever charming. When he’s not playing Scrabbles, he’s admiring fair ladies along the busy streets in Abeoukuta. Say hi on Twitter @shittafaruqade1.