I wish, I am you
how I wish, you
can feel what I am feeling
I am just a child like you
with same lives but we
live in different world.

I wish, I am safe
in the street, I wish
I have a meal not a meat.

I always go to sleep with an
empty stomach, sounding
like a scooter. You have
both the meal and the meat
to eat. I am a hungry lion.

I wish, you can see how my
heart is melting in hunger
and anger through the glass.

I wish, if you can’t see me in
You, look at the mirror.

You can see a broken heart
with scar, scatter like
a broken mirror.

I wish, I have a shoe to
wear, I roam around bare
footed, you have both the
shoe and the ride.

I wish, I have parents
to lean on, you have
both to call on.

I wish, someone can
feel what I am going
through, I am a insecure child.

How i wish, I can see someone
to call Dad or Mum.

I wish, I have not fall from
tree to be treat like this.

I wish, I have a good living
like other children, I am not a
blind, I see how other parents
are treating their kids with kindness.

I wish, I can hold up my pains to move
on to push to a greater height.

I am a child the memory is fresh,
I wish, I can erase it, in my mind.

I can’t it’s a scar it has stained
to stay, the mind stored it.

By: Auwal Uba Mustapha

Now on hospital beds, they both lay:
Grandpa’s promise that assured attendance
At my first recital at the end of the school day;
And grandma’s promise to bake the cakes
For my friends who’d come to play.

Then comes the vicious claws of loneliness,
To grip my heart; suppressed by idleness.
The long jealous distance led by this virus
now has an audacious reason
To cut asunder our togetherness.

A thousand questions unanswerable.
Neither when nor how favorable,
could no one account for.
I have to embrace this bitter isolation
And in confusion cry out this sour condition.

Yet even in this corridors of loneliness,
I’m given room to woo lucrative thinking.
I am drowned in ideas that bring me fear,
Fear of the mighty me that had laid hidden,
Hidden for the donkey years I have eaten.

But on my weakest weaknesses
I have built a wall of strength,
I’ve painted it with a realization;
that though deadly, it still, is just a viral pest,
Beatable only by a staunch desire to beat it.

So I’m consoled with an enthusiasm,
Whose flipping fan fans out optimism,
And a fresh air that boldly spells out the fact
That ‘this too shall come and pass’
So now, I live by the breath of a hopeful anxiety.

By: John Ettah & Thelma Moses