Portrait of Home as an Indefinite Pronoun
In English class,
Our teacher said redundancy flaws a paragraph
When the sunrise in the evening,
I call it a shadow of every leg
Made to walk away from where
They used to call home
That is the only pronoun I know for reluctance.
Home is the only place we leave
With pockets suspended by memories,
Eggs we do not want to break to distance
Of faraway lands
Where displaced birds drenched by rain,
Gather on street wires
And watch the storm cart away their nests
For if it were home,
They would’ve borrowed fire from the neighbouring kitchen
To warm the food.
At home, no one beats a masquerade for trespass
At the worst, they’d show him the way back to the shrine.
Contributor’s Bio
Solahudeen’s writing evolves from thought, and so, a thinker was born in that land of virtue, Osun state, Nigeria. Ridwanullah is a lover of God and His creatures, including nature. Thusly, this preoccupated most, if not all of his works. He is a 200 Level student of Law at Bayero University, Kano, Kano state. He was the winner of MSSN 2019 Best Essayist Award. He won Barr Mahmud Kola Adesina SAN AMIS Osun state Best Essayist Award in 2020. His works—Tornado years and Without Despair earned him first place in the Stars prize, 2020. He was 2nd Essayist of the Year 2019 at Brain Builders International. His works are up, and coming on Spillwords magazine, Almirath Magazine, the Shallowtales review, Feeds lit, inter alia.
