By Adeiza Atureta
There was silence in the neighborhood.
When I slipped behind the Onitsha crowd
I felt an angry pressure wanting to rise.
In the heat of the containment on a crowded street,
feeling a tremendous pull down there,
my feet, full of running, wore an uncommon calm.
With no resistance at all, I waited.
In the middle of confusion, left, right, and center
the gun fired a third time without my realizing it.
Cries of Chineke Me Zi O Kwu filled the abundant air.
I collapsed almost immediately. Unconscious,
overtaken for the first time by real pain all over me,
my effort was now over: God was already here;
I had been surrounded by a stream of riot policemen.
A cold came down upon me, quietly, in my stillness,
in those last few seconds that seemed never-ending.
***
ADEIZA ATURETA was born in Ogaminana, North-central Nigeria and currently lives in Abuja. His poems have appeared in A Feast For The Mind, Temptation, and Shout It Out! Poems Against Domestic Violence. He has also published a short story in Write For Light: A Collection of True Stories and Poems about Finding Light in the Darkness. Atureta is a trained journalist and member of Nigerian Institute of Public Relations (NIPR).