In my mouth, a pebble—the heft of inheritance.
Yet, a lavender of truth grows on my tongue.
Silence has been what coats the glory of my garden.
My mother spat hers against a slave ship, & got
a continent of sorrow as a tattoo on her tongue.
In another version of this wonder, ancient iroko
in the field, once bowed, straightened their trunks.
What does it take to craft ears on your windowpane?
Let’s say this land is the finest apple with insects
on the hillside, a skulk of foxes tiptoeing through
the forest–– that’s the caricature of our voices.
I can take all the dews on lilies as God’s tears
but I insist a flawed heaven would always have
a girl trailing the moon. This tribe gave me birth,
a gleam half-chewed by grief. If the atlas owns
a museum for the feet that have walked it, my voice
would occupy the chief gallery. The world offers
its negligence to girls bargaining for life in the market.
I mean, auricles clutch our voices than a fist over flies.
I’ve been screaming. & craving therapy for this
ailing homeland, for the memory of the dead,
for the ones mourning them. I’m glad you offered
your ears, good listener. There will be paradise here.

AUTHOR’S BIOGRAPHY

Rachael Madakan Dandi is a Nigerian writer and spoken word poet, a student of Jewel Model Secondary School, and a member of the Hill-Top Creative Arts Foundation, Abuja. Her poetry has been nominated for the Splendors of Dawn Poetry Prize and the Vivian Ihaza Sevhage Prize for Poetry. She is the recipient of the 2025 BCD-Utulu Literary Prize for Poetry (Youth Category) and the 2026 Nigeria Poetry Prize for Teen Authors for her manuscript, String Theories. She is a two-time winner of the Spoken Word category at the 7th and 8th Hadiza Ibrahim Aliyu Schools Festival and was also the first runner-up in the On-the-Spot Fiction category.