DAUGHTERS OF STONE AND FLAME

Bonjoru Rejoice
@rejoicebonjoru247785
1 month ago

Two queens at the table,
Two queens,
friends, companions,
bonded by the weight of kingdoms on their shoulders,
especially in a world carved for men.

Queen Moremi of Ilé-Ifè.
Queen Amina of Zazzau.
Warriors of the same war,
but with different weapons,
different victories,
different scars.

Moremi;
a beautiful, melanated woman,
her skin tender as a bison calf,
yet her heart harder than volcanic stone.
She has known the sweetness of roasted efi,
and the stench of burning flesh,
her sacrifice lingering in the air like smoke that refuses to rise.

Amina;
tall, her frame carved for war,
as if the gods intended a son,
but handed the world a daughter instead.
A woman with iron for blood,
steel for sinew,
a warrior who wields her sword
as easily as a mother bares her breast to feed a child.

And today, they sit.
Not to whisper of girls and games as they once did,
but to unburden themselves of the heavy yoke,
the hardships of shouldering generations.

“I sacrificed my child,” Moremi whispers,
her smile dark and bitter,
like iru fermenting in the soup pots of wives
who bait their drunken husbands home.
“What kind of mother am I,
to trade blood for the survival of strangers?”

Amina’s laughter breaks the air,
a cooing, low sound,
like an owl nesting in the rafters.
Or perhaps it is an owl.
The room will not confess.

“Well,” Amina says, her eyes glinting,
“at least you had the blessing of womanhood.”

And the table transforms:
not wood anymore,
but a battleground where spirit-animals feast.
For I see before me not queens,
but a lioness and a mother eagle,
drinking palm wine,
tearing into pepper soup.

One spears her meat with a blood-stained sword,
and the other breathes fire into her calabash
until the wine boils
before she drinks.



#Hellonircle
#poetry
#prosepoetry

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