My back is bent under the weight of your rejection;
The roots of my being are not
Deep enough for you to call me sister,
Not deep enough that I be a daughter to your mother.
My roots are foreign and my leaves, different;
A palm tree in a garden of ficus.
Never mind that this is where I am planted,
Where I have always been,
That this is where I call home.
When the breezes blow, your leaves bend,
Protecting only your own and you say to me,
“Maybe you should go home.”
But this is the home I know.
Still I take heed and move
To the land where the trees are palms
But nothing is different.
My neck shortens under the weight of more rejection.
The palms do not call me brother either.
My roots are tainted, they say
By the soils of the ficus garden which nurtured me,
And my leaves are coloured in pigments foreign and unlike home.
When the floods come, I must face the elements on my own.
“Maybe you should go back home” they say.
But where is home?
I cannot go with the winds that blow north,
In Arewa, I am not kin.
Not East either,
Where I am not a Nwa afo.
I cannot set my roots in the west,
As my story doesn’t start with a shell of sand and a rooster.
The palm trees of the south will not have me,
My roots are not southern enough.
My shoulders are breaking from the weight of rejection.
Where will I call home?
jaymarensworld 