Your teeth have fled their nest.
Dust rules over the Holy Book.
Untouched buttons of your radio look on.
Curtain folds are like a nurse’s starched uniform.
Your soup bowl has become a roach’s pool.
Your appetite is painted in dull colors.
Your walking stick is the center in the spider’s handcraft.
Vivacity basks in a second childhood.
The sturdy voice that bounced on walls is now drained.
The kite-sharp eyesight simmers on dying fire.
Your countenance is the light of a fast sinking sun.
Muscles of steel now soft like newly ground corn.
Humor has abandoned your garden.
Where are the mighty hands that lifted me when I fell?
Silent weeds strangle years.
Tendrils of life are tangled up and bewildered.
Your worm-eaten garb sways in the wind.
My eyes well up and rage weighs my throat down.
You are the mahogany never meant to shed its leaves.
Sophie N. Bamwoyeraki.
