Bitter-sweet

I’ll let my snails crawl

I’ll let my life run its course

Although I feed my snails waterleaf and watermelon

I’ll remove the restraining basket

Ill let my snails have some freedom

I’ll let myself breathe

Though I love my snails yet,

Their tender feet so clean and pace so slow

I thought they couldn’t go across the fence

I was mistaken

I’m not able to cover the sun with my palms

I’m not able to save them all

The three biggest of them, I lost to the other side of the fence

With their saliva, I traced their path

My neighbor didn’t even ask me if I was missing any snails

But how could he even

I never spoke a word to him

He never spoke a word to me

The wall separating us is built high

That’s how to live in a big city

But I know of his wife and children

Never seen them, except that I used to hear the wife scream out at her children Amara, Chukwuma

And they used to prove a handful

They left me amused and I loved their family

All the while I tended to my snails

Gathering them in a basket

As I didn’t wish to lose anyone of them again

My neighbor doted on her offspring’s

I doted on my snails

But I cry not

I am a devoted woman

And on the date of July 5th

I found the last of my snail, feet clamped on the stem of my bitter leaf tree

I picked it up and placed in my basket

That day, something pulled me in my lower belly

And my doctor confirmed to me of my pregnancy

The day I picked my snail on a bitter leaf tree

Such irony of slow movement and a bitter tree with a sweet after taste

I become a mother against all odds.