Ameh Gloria // This Country will know our names // Poetry

 

Ameh Gloria

 

 

This Country will know our names

 

 

one day the sky may fall so the earth won’t be so hard to walk on

what will become of the orb that sheds light—

will it fall and surge our skins?

I ask like a man tangled in his own thoughts

pardon me—

for like a wandering prophet I seek mercy

for all skins bleeding curses not from heavens

but from same flesh, same dust, same hunger

 

this ground knows my mother's footsteps—

how she danced sorrow into stew and served it warm

my father’s sigh still curls in the walls like harmattan dust

our roof sang with every rain, leaking prayer and persistence

we no get plenty, but we get loud laughter

and stories stronger than NEPA’s will to fail

 

they say the country is broken

but we carry pieces in our pockets

turn them into roadside poems

vulcanizer hymns, suya smoke choruses

a danfo ride is a whole choir

and every horn is a stanza

 

my friends write hope with borrowed ink

on school walls peeling like truth

and the boy on the street corner

freestyles his future into existence

 

we are children of cracked classrooms

writing futures with half-sharpened pencils

yet, we dream—God, how we dream

even if our dreams sweat in traffic

even if they wear okrika shoes

 

and maybe one day

when the sky falls gently like old praise songs

this country will remember our names—

not the way sorrow remembers tears

but like a sunrise remembers dawn

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Gloria Ameh is a Nigerian writer and poet from Benue State whose work blends creativity, emotion, and insight. With a distinctive voice, she explores themes of identity, humanity, and social reality through poetry and prose, threading together personal and collective experiences with lyrical insight. She is a member of the Hilltop Creative Arts Foundation (HCAF) and is passionate about using literature as a tool for reflection and change. Gloria aspires to contribute meaningfully to contemporary African literature.