Power
A tool for greatness.
Or so ‘they’ say,
A personified instrument we all desperately want,
Or need?
Needed by the weak
The oppressed
And the suppressed.
By us, not you.
Us.
Those of us like me born with a whisper
Not a roar
In a world where the loud one’s rule and the quiet serve.
Where power sits high on glass shelves
Fragile and ready to crawl at any exposure.
This new world I came into dragging suitcases packed with stories
And a passport stamped other.
New tongue,
New streets,
New stares that ask without words:
‘Do YOU belong here?’
I was the teen standing at the room’s edge
Wearing a smile that didn’t quite fit,
Stitched from survival.
I feared the mirror,
Feared it would reveal the parts of me I’d have to fold away just to be accepted.
And power,
Felt foreign, like something I’d never hold.
Like it belonged to the voices that laughed at me,
My name,
My unmistakable Nigerian accent that is forever entwined and visible in the ever so little conversations I had.
But listen and listen well o
Power no dey always loud
E no dey always carry shoulder
Sometimes,
Na to just wake and still show face for place wey no kuku send me.
It’s rewriting foreign
Into familiar.
It’s being afraid
And standing anyway.
It’s letting your voice shake but still using it.
Power is a black,
Not particularly advantaged teen like me.
Brown skinned,
Brave,
Bold,
Rocking boxed braids
With eyes that hold unspeakable truths.
With a head that wears her story like a crown.
Walking into spaces I once shrank
Taking up roles and conquering quests my ancestors would be proud of.
I’m growing to be a young powerful woman
Not the little easily suppressed young girl I once was.
What is a powerful woman?
E mi ni
She doesn’t beg to exist
I am that woman.
I have learnt that strong roots don’t sprout overnight.
They grow deep in earth,
In darkness,
Until they rise.
I have risen now
I stand
With my name on my chest
With my accent sweet like home.
I am power
Like agbada wey spread gbooro for owambe
I show up, I represent.
Because every braid,
Every choice,
Every step I climb up the ladder is a root deeper in power.
A growth in the so-called power.
The power I didn’t know I had.