Report-Card

Photocredit- Adrian McDonald

Remember that day you had your school party?

It was third-term,

You were on the queue,

waiting to get your “report card”

You weren’t sure what you saw,

so you cleaned your eyes to reaffirm the digits

Yes, it wasn’t singular

And yes It didn’t change, it was still 22

you had already started shedding internal tears

you knew home won’t be a safe place to live in that day

so in your unwise wisdom,

you erased one digit and left the other

in your head, you’re safe now

you go home,

Father looks at the result,

he looks at you, looks back at the report

he does this three times

he knew the scores didn’t correlate with the grade

he had seen the scratch at one end, he smiles

he congratulates you to sleep

you’re free now, so you thought

you begin to feel pains in your back, in your dream

it wasn’t your dream,

it was father taking his pound of flesh

home became the trap you still fell into

That was when you knew,

that in African homes, nothing goes unpunished

and delay is not denial.