And they all perished

 And they all perished and

Became memories of the past

Halima, the lover of whitemen, I passed you as a child of eight,

 on the street with one of your lovers, one of your victims.

He stood, balding and sandy-haired and bespectacled, arms akimbo, listening as you denied your status on the street,

wanting to believe the lies you swore were the truth, knowing in despair, that the truth was dark and brooding  and fatal.

Those days, the deaths were swift, and horrific,

The faces that stared back were emaciated, and desperate,

The death had robbed them all dignity of dying and the dignity of living

It wasted them in the wards, eyes that couldn’t hide

Minds that could not fathom the depth of their sorrows,

Memories painful, dreams cut short.

They died to our horror and in their trauma and in our trauma, modern day pariahs, twenty-first century outcasts, we were all victims of the horror that swept furiously.

It was a complete death, of the soul and mind, we the living were eager to forget 

and remembered friends and family not as they lived, but as they died.

Beautiful Liyatu, full breasted and fair, I heard you had gone, you were so young, so I knew like we all knew  that the young did not die but when they did, it was this strange death,

This death, that was all around us, in the corners and in the whispers, in the silence and in gossips, it walked, indiscriminately this destroyer of our young, taking away our friends, it showed no mercy, you could not know, and wouldn’t know, whom it longed to take away tumor

Chocolate Tabitha, you took the scythe, and took the lives, furiously, in your beauty, they did not know how furious you were to be taken, so you killed with your kisses and spread and spread till you could spread no more, dying alone, at twenty . 

Asabe, curly haired, fair skinned Asabe, who no one  could not compete against,

You had Babagana's heart, even when you were faraway

in Kaduna, Kano, he was faithful, and waited for your return

Beautiful Asabe, did you take him along,

was your love destined to be the fatal cusp?

The man with three wives, whose magnificent mansion, desolate and deserted, who conveyed his fatal gifts to his three wives

Alhaji, young and fresh, barely twenty three, air steward, fair skinned, who loved to live, you denied and swore, and still you perished with kiss of Kpaosi Sacroma adorning your neck

Ada so sad and so close,Charlie you were called, yours was the worst, because you carried me as a child, and I watched you waste away Charlie, the brain, chemistry whiz-kid, Alpha Canaris, you are a now tree in Oturkpo, which I will revisit one day

Attah, laughing one, always jovial, always sleeping, it took you away, you died despondent, confessing needless and innocent crimes to a world who looked away 

Little name with the big pain only time can unravel the terror you gave and sorrow you brought,, only time can heal the sorrow you brought in Nigeria during the 90s and 2000s