At Sunset

By Charles Mercy

At the gathering, present in my father’s compound. There are souls filled with joy, smiling faces luminous than the sun, mouths engulf with laughter, and the marvel sounds of children giggles simultaneously extend the atmosphere.

The songs of a new beginning and the sweet cry of a new born. Everybody could be seen dancing out of happiness, the women waists shaking and hands clapping out of excitement, the men heads nodding and tapping their legs to the rhyme of the song. The children jumping and singing to the chorus, “oh, a child is born”.

In my father’s house there isn’t and was never a boy. Everyman is a man. A farmer or a hunter, everyone with his own tool. Everyman a warrior for his  household and his own. We were taught to grow as a man. 

There’s a wedding feast, the gathering of guest and relatives far and near. Everybody with their dancing shoes, flowing with the party spirit and the beats of talking drums.

A bride has been chosen for the child of yesterday which he is now a grown up lad. A beautiful maiden greatly adorn with beauties and exchanged with pride. Oh he is now a complete man.

In my father’s compound. There is a gathering as usual all Hearts present are buried with sadness, the faces that once smiled are covered in tears, my father’s friends, the people that once dine with him are now nodding their heads in pity –heads that once nodded with him in laughter, stiff faces everywhere. 

Pushing through the crowd and finally into my father’s hut. Never has it ever been this dim and quiet as a grave yard. holding up the old palm lamp, closely enough to see mama silently weeping beside his bed with him lying stiff.

“Oh, a man is dying, papa is sick”.

Charles Mercy Idemudia was born September 23, 2003. A student of Federal university of Mafia, Nasarawa state. He hails from Edo state and reside in Abuja. He is a science student, a poet and a writer.