Night of a Thousand Laughs
The first time you saw a soul leave,
The rains were leaving too.
A lorry had passed,
undoing the spell that bound a spirit to a body,
Showing the soul the safest way to fly.
You had wanted to sing this body a lullaby,
But your mother said,
“Child, have you not learnt that
some pains come to us unannounced?
Like the intrusion of harmattan on rainy days?”
The pains you had known had come in small parcels,
One of which was God, and
How as the rains came and went,
you transitioned from peanut to bitter kola,
Your soul trapping jaded things like fishes.
The song gathered
And gathered,
And as you watched your lover’s body empty itself of warmth,
Going to sleep in parts,
You began to laugh.
Someone said he was sorry for your loss,
You told him your lover had only gone to China.
You laugh again, this time your voice broke into many tunes.
You began singing, your song an Aubade to nameless things.
You began weeping,
there is only a level of cold our bodies can bear.
