Before we knew the world for what it was:
cruelty upon cruelty, we were young
and filled with joy.
Everything we touched made us happy,
everything that touched us
was our way of saying life is a big maze
of adventure, a race where running
is what it took to win.

Before we knew the world as a family of sadness,
we would dance in the rain,
our mothers’ voices distant from us,
calling us back home.
The thrill of dancing was always more
than our fear of being scolded,
so we would dance to our hearts’ content.

The rain, like a small music note
would fall everywhere and prepare the night for tea,
warm fireplaces, and roasted corn.
It was a miracle how nostalgia was our way of life,
how before every memory is the passing of time,
slow as the present,
certain as the past.

[A poem exhibited at The Optimist’s Incomplete Exhibition and also performed at the Heritage Day, as part of the Benue Book and Arts Festival at the DH Lawrence Birthplace Museum, Eastwood, Nottingham on 12 September 2026]

---

Kingsley Okafor is a writer whose work examines, among other things, the implications of identity, belonging, ambition, and migration, as a Black person. He is a Nigerian who currently lives in and writes from the UK. Kingsley has work forthcoming in Eunoia Review, JAY Lit, Soul Poetry, and elsewhere. His forthcoming debut collection of poetry is titled The Slow Passage of Time.