in the beginning, there were numbers.
a mouthful of them invented to make murder
sound too much like arithmetic:
one body, plus one scream, times 2,000.
count. 2,000 seconds from now,
the sky will fall a little lower.
you won’t feel it, but that’s the
whole point. every second is leash
to hold. pull long enough, & something
gives—a brick, a breath, a body.
2,000 meters away, abuja area mama
is murdered. her jaw clenched shut
like she bit through 2,000 spoons,
because the knife was busy elsewhere
in her body. at the crime scene, a man
says she saw it coming. says war begins
at 2,000 miles before the first shot is fired.
says a number first fits into a mouth,
long before it fits into a headline:
news flash—popular nigerian trans woman
found dead along abuja highway. tragic incident.
say mister, then say ma’am.
say incident as if violence is a thing
that stumbles into itself.
as if a blade trips, & suddenly
there’s a throat in the way.
you count 2,000 ways to burn
& not one of them requires fire.
i count 2,000 kilometers spreading too wide
for justice. 2,000 steps taken
from the scene to the morgue.
2,000 failures stacked
into something that moves—or will
no longer move.
i have seen a man’s face break
when he steps over a body
that looks like his but isn’t.
i have grazed concrete that bore
the outline of a scream, the contour of a jaw
that resisted. what have we made
of this world? you count numbers,
i count cities by how fast they eat
their dead.
somewhere, someone prays for morning
& gets only more night.
safety is a watered dialogue
budding in the mouths of norm-borns.
the rest of us lock our doors & pray our pronouns
don’t leak into the night.
at 2,000 feet above sea level, the air thins,
but not my memory.
2,000 lights have gone out & each one,
a little apocalypse.
i will count. i will count 2,000 times
if that’s what it takes.
if that’s what it takes
for one of them
to finally count
back.
count.
Hilary Ikechukwu Emerole.
count.
Hamza Idris-Tofawa.
count.
Umar Yusuf-Dungurawa.
count.
