Proverb rides on the back of word’s stallion, and vice versa. But here, these words run faster than my expression. A hundred steps at a time. A book of seventy thousand words harvested from the twenty-six alphabets. When the universe would form, it sprouted after the utterance of a word: “Be,” and it became. God said, “Verily Our words to a thing when We desire it is to say to it: be, and it becomes.” I imagine God speaking in hyperbole, that is, exaggerating events into existence. Don’t you think they would over-happen? Did the universe over-happen?
In Yoruba, language lifts rocks and holds down birds; offers shelter to feelings, so wide that it becomes scary to stay in.
To describe a headache, we say, orí ń fọ́ mi; which means, my head is breaking me, which is to say I am not safe from my head. Which means my head is capable of destruction. This means I hold a delicate substance on my neck, say a dynamite, a time bomb— ticking towards explosion. Once, Father administered a medication to me. To use above the prescribed dosage is abuse, an overdose. In my progenitors’ language, there is an overdose of language that’s not an abuse. We widen boundaries and shift roadblocks with words, describe addresses with the fold of our lips, jutted out towards the destination.
When we are hungry, we say, ebi ń pamí, that is, hunger is killing me. An emergency alert, a declaration of death. I wonder how Mother asked me to wait a little more after I told her ebi ń pamí. A mother won’t hear her child’s cry and not leap into flight, how much more when the child is dying. Is this what the Yoruba mean when they say “the pathway to the throat is the road to heaven?” The English version is “the way to a man’s heart is his stomach.” You may want to juxtapose the duo, it’s beyond the difference of tinctures.
To say “I have a stomach ache” is inú ń run mí. With this, you just declared a state of emergency on your body. You just said my stomach is ruining me. That is, a tumult is happening in my stomach, a hurricane is an understatement. If inú rírun kills, then I should have died before the end of my teen ages. But I’m a miracle, a leaf of bryophylum, sprouting like fresh plants from total decay, from complete annihilation. A jẹbọ̀ tree, whose bark grows back a few minutes after it’s been sliced off.
To say I am sick or I’m not feeling well, we say ara-à mi ò yá. That is, my body is not fast. That is, my body takes the shape of a snail. A tortoise is tweaking inside my bone. A wise man once said the slow movement of a leopard is not cowardice but a calculated hunting strategy. But to say ara-à mi ò yá feels like saying I am slowing down into death, withering, dissolving. Dying begins with dizziness. To say I’m feeling dizzy is òyì ń kọ́ mi, meaning, dizziness is hanging me, which is to say I am experiencing the aftermath of a neck constricted by a noose. My eyes, the redness of a gallow, painting the night into surrender.
My progenitors are innate poets. Their tongues are sharpened at all edges. Their words split rocks and grind them to powder. To euphemise here is to distract countrymen from you. They say a man bitten by a snake would neither euphemize nor simplify. He would not say I’ve been bitten by a snake. He would summon his ancestors instead, and say Ejò ti ṣán mi. That is to say, a snake has munched me; as in, I am dissolving away in its venom; see my life being blown away from my palm, dust by dust.
Yorùbá, pronounced re do mi, a tongue soaked in poesy.
Taofeek Ayeyemi “Aswagaawy” is a Nigerian lawyer, writer and author of Aubade at Night or Serenade in the Morning (FlowerSong Press, 2021), Tongueless Secrets (Ethel Press, 2021), Dust & Rust (Buttonhook Press, 2022) and Some Stars Do Not Fall (Nimble House, 2024). A BotN and Pushcart Prize Nominee, his works have appeared in CV 2, Lucent Dreaming, Up-the-Staircase Quarterly, FERAL, ARTmosterrific, Banyan Review, Conscio, Porter House Review, the QuillS and elsewhere. He won the 2021 Loft Books Flash Fiction Competition, and 2nd Place in the 2021 Porter House Review Poetry Contest, among others. He is @Aswagaawy on X and IG.
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