Delight Chilegide Olumati

When the grief we’ve decided to embrace decides to rob us, how do we keep our hands still wrapped around it?
Can the land we buried our mothers still be proud enough to answer when we call it our fatherland?
What do we call a tongue that’s forgotten its way home?
What do we call a man that’s forgotten his source of happiness?

1987
Several things happened on the seventh night, that caused us to wonder.
In six days we buried our mother, our tears ran into streams before the fifth.
On the fourth night we were scared of the moonlight that appeared.
Our hearts, too tired to carry the third loss, we asked:
Can two make up a nuclear family now?
Can one man carry the burden of two?

If our father loses the strength in the power of prayers sent with our mother tongue, what do we do?
At what point can we say grief robbed us?
If after the second loss it decides to take again, is that now a familiar face?
What do we call grief when it’s taken more than enough?