Poet of the Week: Faiza Bello

I Was Born I was born to create and not to be moulded To capture the world with my light With the sweetness bestowed in me like a coated sugar Move matter with confidence and grace   I was born with strength in my soul I see the sunshine in the morning Beckoning the roses […]

I Was Born

I was born to create and not to be moulded

To capture the world with my light

With the sweetness bestowed in me like a coated sugar

Move matter with confidence and grace

 

I was born with strength in my soul

I see the sunshine in the morning

Beckoning the roses of petals to bloom

I feel the softness of the care in my palms and hardness of the strength they posses

 

I was born to love and cherish

I’m an ocean which will drown your ocean

Like a peacock

I’ll move with my heads not bowed

 

It’s not a feeling of pride

Or cravings of power

But the grace of being a woman

In the respect I command

Oh yes! I’m a woman

A daughter of the day world

I’m the teller of my own tale

Yes I was born a woman

A contented woman

Eyes glistening with happiness just like a ray of sunshine

Smiling like a shining star

Dressed up as a princess mummy wanted

Being the perfect daughter daddy loves

 

She runs up to mummy “can I talk to you?”

Hoping mummy will answer her this time but no as usual, “I had a tired day, talk to your uncle, have a good night “

 

“Daddy help me with my assignment “she says

“I’m busy, meet your uncle princess”

She has no choice, she has to go to uncle

She has to do the assignment

She has to be the best in class just like mummy and daddy wanted.

Every knockon uncle’s door was like knocking on a hot piece of coal

Legs shaking like a newborn fawn

She could feel her heartbeat through the bulging veins in her neck

Uncle did it again and again, like a vulture, he fed on her silent agony

And he said be silent

 

The memories assaulting her over and over in her head

She wanted to tell mummy and daddy

But they wouldn’t listen

She had to be silent, had to scream silently

“Be silent “she repeated.

 

Faiza Bello, 17, emerged third place in the Professor Andrew Nok Poetry Prize for her poems, ‘Lost in Me,’ ‘I Was Born,’ and ‘Silent Scream.’ She recently rounded off her secondary school education from Queens College, Lagos.