Dust as grammar.
The dry season arrives
with its own punctuation—
a comma between
what was green
and what is not.
The body learns to read it:
cracked lips as parentheses,
the itch behind the eyes
an ellipsis,
waiting.
← PoetryNature & place
Harmattan syntax
Nsisong Effiong9 April 2026
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Responses03 responses
Adaeze Okoye15 Apr 2026
Dust as grammar — this line stopped me completely. The harmattan has always felt like a kind of syntax to me too, a seasonal punctuation the body reads before the mind does.
Kemi Adeyemi15 Apr 2026
The cracked lips as parentheses image is extraordinary. You have made the body into a text.
Tunde Fashola15 Apr 2026
I grew up in Kano and this poem knows exactly what December feels like. Thank you for this.
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