Murtala Muhammed International Airport, Lagos, Nigeria 
 
It will begin the moment they land. 
 
The woman will grab the girl’s hand, pinch the

meat between her thumb and they will transform

into hunchbacks, umbilically connected by the 

duplicated marks on their left hip. 

​

A boy will appear, like a skittering savanna hare, 
marred with sleep lines from his mother’s bosom,
readied to adopt their lead for the coming hour. 
The mother will not protest, the girl will swallow

 

her tongue like a lozenge and tap upon the dead 
general’s sandstone to remind herself that 
he will always be below. 
               There are worse things to give up, she imagines. 

​

The boy will hoist his name upon his head and lead

them into dark light. Soon the people will call him

a rising sun, then he will forget the chest that

homed his coils amidst turbulent descent.  
 
Soon, he will float across the Niger River sprawled 
upon a raft stitched from remnants of deflowered bodies, 
then grow tired of that memory, purchase a fresh set 
of hind legs and offer himself to the race.