Writing with Juliet Iwelunmor

More than once we take memories, those hard and true, those painful and fruitful, we take them all and use them to blossom like tall Iroko trees. We are woman. Ordinary, but woman. We are all of life, surrounded by the love for life. We are pictures, perfect, broken, but pictures capturing memories, of times painful and fruitful. We are blessed, like the blackness of berries, blessed like the ripeness of cherries and sweet. We are life, full, light and still. We didn’t expect this life. We didn’t expect all the ways it toss and turns us as if on a roller coaster that never ends. Knowing, we are a rollercoaster that never ends.

If this moment of our life, a beginning, middle or even an end, if any of this moment represents a decolonial turn, then we will turn with home on our minds, remembering no condition is permanent, things do fall apart, even as we wait to tell all these tales by moonlight, for nothing is ever as it seems, for women so ordinary.

So we will turn, this time to look inwards, to surround our worlds, with people and places ready for this light within to shine brightly, we will turn not afraid, turn not unaware, turn not silent, turn not in denial, turn not alone, turn high on endurance, from Mama Ocha’s race to our own, for our own, Maka Onyelo, Onyelo, na Isioma, ga no di eba, Onyelo na Isioma ga si nekwa nekwa, and wa Za ya. I didn’t expect any of this. I never expected any of this. Yet to be here, at this moment, on my own, for my own, and all those who turn with me, is the stuff dreams of an ordinary woman are made up. Keep turning on your own, for your own.

And all the above were inspired by the one and only ordinary, good woman poet I adore, Lucille Clifton…