I walk out in the market now
but I was born many years later.
The sharp salt of the sea whips through the wind,
and I imagine fishwives
as frequently as on wooden stalls, laughing,
their hands red with the palms’ oil
and memory.
A man sells beads,
as white as sea-foam caught in glass,
and I sense a charge of a hundred unseen lives
in the way he counts.
A child runs past,
striking a rock which remembers the naked feet
and the weight of rusted chains he has never bore.
I see the smoke from roasting cassava
and the muffled fear
that once tightened the air
like a fist around a throat.
I step into a doorway that does not exist on any map,
and hear the clamours,
salt-cracked voices of ancient photographs:
voices which speak of kingdoms,
salt caravans, ships that sailed into a red horizon
and never returned.
I close my eyes,
and I am standing among them,
the current islands of the old blood,
a witness
to joy, grief, survival.
That is what the mind is, baked corn crackling in heat
inked ledger pages stained brown
the midnight sweat of non-sleeping forefathers.
History, the warm, humid market air thick with brine
of that which will not be forgotten.
⤪⤭
Abraham Aondoana is a writer, poet and novelist. He is a recipient of Idembeka Creative Writing Workshop 2026. His poem was shortlisted for Interwoven Anthology (Renard Press). His works has been published in Kalahari Review, The Philly Chap review, raven cage zine, poem alone, Prosetrics Magazine, Rough Diamond Poetry, The Cat Poetry Anthology, IHTOV, The Literary Nest, Ink Sweat and Tears (UK), Rogue Agent, Ink in Thirds Magazine, Writing on the Wall, Alien Buddha, Blasphemous Journal, Rust Belt Review, Speculative Insights and elsewhere.