If you look closely in the mirror, in the brief eyes formed when windows darken, in moments your self becomes unavoidable; you will see all the heirlooms your mother has gifted you. Some heirlooms call gazes to themselves, like a crimson necklace and the bloody brag of its jewel. Others are less obvious, nestled in the marrow of bodies heavy with them, the dark essence of blood itself.
***
The beauty my mother gave me calls gazes to itself. Hers is a sum of high cheekbones, a keen jawline, full eyebrows, lashes long enough to make a brief flight of every blink, a small nose rounded to a thumb and the darkness of it all, a skin like dusk.
In the mirror, her eyes stare back at me, their hazel pools encircled by dark tiles. As a child, I would close my eyes before committing an act my mother had instructed against, hoping that I could trust the blindness with a secret. Hoping she would not know what her eyes had not seen. Yet, even blindness fails as a confidant. It has nowhere to hide a daughter from her mother’s eyes. All it takes is one look and that whispering voice I did not inherit. A weight would form on my tongue, the truth pooling in my mouth like Pavlov’s dog at the tinkle of his bell.
It does not help that I get a thrill from lying. The avoidance of consequences. The sensual tickle of watching a face soften with belief as the truth is subverted. Silk scarves wrapped around their feet. Polished words luring them astray.
Once, a woman who could have been my mother-in-law asked me a fruitless question, ready to deem me undeserving of her son after my answer. With a self-important stare, she asked if I was pure. I avoided her gaze with a coy blink — suppressing the thought of kneeling before her and leading her hand up my gown so she could feel for herself. I met her stern eyes through the curtain of my lashes, drew my knees together, as if keeping myself from the penetration of the question itself, and answered her, in a voice void of self. Beeni ma.
I watched her fair complexion flush with pride into that sated shade of sunset. As she nodded at her son with barely-contained satisfaction, I caught a glimpse of myself in a distant mirror. She licked the molar of her lower jaw, her mouth parted slightly to allow her tongue snake against the entire jaw. My glimpse grew blurry with relish and I turned back to her son, thinking impure thoughts.
Obáfémi Thanni is a poet whose works of poetry and fiction have received Pushcart Prize nominations. An alumnus of the Johannesburg Institute for Advanced Study’s Writers’ Workshop, his works have appeared in the 20.35 Anthology, Lolwe, Kissing Dynamite Poetry, Wildness, Oyster River Pages, SAND, Parentheses Journal, Contemporary Verse 2 and elsewhere. He was a shortlistee for the 2023 Public Space Writing Fellowship, 2022 Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize and was honourably mentioned by the Berlin Writing Prize in 2022. A former poetry editor at Chestnut Review, he spends his time between the cities of Ibadan, Abuja and Lucille, making attempts at beauty.
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