Cancer Knocked on my Neighbor’s Door – Olobo Ejile

I hear prayers spiral into the air;
to heaven to reach the ears of God.
Through the net and the darkness of their room,
I watch her silhouette, imagine sweat; and think how her heart must pound as hard as a hunter’s during his chase for game.

Her husband jittered,
her three little children soaked in shock,
unable to understand the anguish
sipping through their mother’s body,
nonetheless, their eyes begged God to ease her pain.

Her spirit bade us farewell that morning, but the angels who came for her left a message—
it is not yet her time.
She lived two more years.

Despite the double mastectomy,
malignant continued to spread even on the wall of her chest.
She was breastlessly moved
about from one prayer house to another.
Prayer, they say, is the key.
But it didn’t open the door to her healing.

Her last days were sour—too sour for her to bear.
At the veranda where she lay with her withered body on a long bench,
I saw her eyes begging God to unbuckle soul from body once more.

Two years have passed since her internment.
The children she left behind carry innocence which holds them in the delusion that that their mother travelled and would someday return.
Her husband, still recuperating…
remembers those years when I nodded in bereavement, saying:
there are no more pills to take, & there is no more life to breathe.


[Author Bio:] Olobo currently pursues a post graduate degree in literature at UI. He draws inspiration from grief, love, and trauma.

1 thought on “Cancer Knocked on my Neighbor’s Door – Olobo Ejile

  1. Bello Micheal Oluwatimileyin says:

    This is indeed beautiful. The poem pedal led memory of losing a dear person. The narrator weave a good story of plea to God.

    I still wonder till now. Why should every grief of pain shoulder on God’s shoulder length.

    Reply

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