my uncle’s third daughter
was born too young
to face this cruel world.
she had a fist no bigger than a thumb,
& a skin so thin you could see
the rivers of veins flowing.
the nurses said it’d be a miracle
if she lives.
in that tiny box at sani abacha,
my uncle & i watched
tubes curled from her nose
like roots searching for soil,
her tiny chest fluttering
against the weight of survival,
fentanyl to trick her pain,
dexamethasone to free her lungs,
oh, what a fighter she was.
my aunt knelt beside the incubator,
palms pressed flat to the glass
as if prayer could travel
through plastic & wires.
she called her abasi names,
while i stood there,
soaking in the war
between life & science,
between science & life;
the thin line between a heartbeat,
& the fragile hands of machines.
to be born early
is to wrestle with time itself,
and to practice medicine
is to keep watch at that border,
refusing to let this cruel world
steal another child.
Felix Eshiet is a Nigerian writer and Efik-Ibibio poet. He is the Brigitte Poirson Literature Prize 2025 (Poetry) winner, an Obsidian Foundation Fellow, and a Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, with works published in Chestnut Review, Madrid Review, Porter House, 20.35 Africa, and elsewhere. Felix is the Editor-in-Chief of Ekondo Review, a literary magazine dedicated to Efik-Ibibio arts and literature.
