Encomium

Ahmadu Damilola Ajibola’s winning entry for the 2019 International Women’s Day Poetry Contest organised by iServe2050, The Crater Library and Enugu Literary Society.

Woman
Who taught you to be silent?
Who taught you that ‘she’ was a synonym for void 
Who told you, that you were a piece to a man’s puzzle.
Did you replete on the lies society fed you?

Don’t you know ‘they’ told her 
She was only to be heard in the echoes of night 
When there’s a crave for flesh to cleave to flesh
You are just thighs, hips, breast
Nothing beyond your skin
Go cater to the needs of the opposite sex.


This
Is for the girl whose rainbow was bleached to monochrome,
For the woman who grew into the confines of domestics,

For the lady who got tangled in society’s expectations while seeking definition 
Her whose dreams succumbed to never because this pronoun christened you unable.

This is for the girl
Who was flicked into marriage for currency
The one who had to wear the title of mother at fourteen.

I know

That you know the lexicon of bitter
It’s fierce dialect gender taught you
How do you construe it to your daughter?

How do you tell her that the water often laced to your cheek, the one your tongue calls salt is how sometimes you’ve learnt to speak, it’s a mark women of diverse tribes carry?

That she must learn to carry her song
Bebop to its symphony everywhere she treads because the world might be dull of music

I know that you should tell her. 

That
Your sex is no mistake, clay is no error in the hand of a potter.
You are enough.
Do not ever apologize for being woman,


For living between the tugging seams of tender and tough 
For being a testament  
A tense apprehension of the holy grail,


Your masterpiece is not for the taking
For no one’s owning 

‘She’ is whole by herself 
‘She’ is valid
‘She’ is not a sin 
Her sun baked, snow white skin is a blessing.


Daughter,

When again a chiding is given for being female 
Tell of your mother

Tell of the long lineage of warriors before you
Tell of women who did
Who threw caution to the wind 
Women who like water existed in shapes they pleased and transcended their broken into spectacular,

Tell them 
Of Michelle Obama
Of Aize Obayan
Of Chimamanda Adichie 
Of Zuriel Oduwole 

Tell them of Rosa Parks
Ty Bello  
Chinyere Eyoh  
Titilope Sonuga 
Olabisi Ahmadu 

Tell them
of YOU! 
and the battalion coming after 

Of how you are the answered prayer of a generation
That the future cannot be man or woman only human

And if ever your soul faints from the magic of the gender you cradle 
Hold firm your wand
Do not cower 
Do not be dismayed at your sculpture 

On such days wear your skin with no veneer 
Bask in the bliss of every detail of your design

Trace the lines across your body and reaffirm your language

Cuddle back into being ‘ HER ‘ 
Into being beauty and brains 
Into being loud or introverted 
Into being follower and leader 
Into being glorious!
Into being human
Into being woman

For you woman are deserving of praise
You woman are worthy.