The poem below is dedicated to you, who think yourself unworthy of love, broken, unsure, and different. It is for you who think the world has forgotten you, rejected you and pushed you aside.
You have to believe, you have to hope, you have to dream and you have to see yourself as something beyond the understanding of mortal minds. You have to identify that you are beautiful despite the suffering, the tears, the scars, the fears. You need to have faith in what and who you are and most importantly, you need to have hope so that you will have fuel to move from today to tomorrow and in so doing make the world see who you truly are.
Just so you know, I love you for who you are and for the potential you have of becoming better, greater, bigger and more beautiful than you already are. Keep breathing, keep dreaming and keep hope alive.
WE ARE MORE THAN WE THINK
I have become something beautiful;
A chrysalis opening to the sun,
A flower feeding the beaks of songbirds,
The drip drop of starlight
On the backs of raindrops
Sliding down the windowpane.
I have become something beautiful.
My hands have become gods,
Creating something wondrous;
Songs like alleluia,
Like beautifully rendered hosannas,
Like a choir in purple and white
Letting voices verse poetry into
Songs that whisper of heaven.
I have become something celestial.
I have become a smile
On the lips of the earth,
Warming to the welcoming dawn,
Breaking the skies into pieces
Of brightly shadowed clouds.
I have become a light,
A glittering silver of illumination.
There are shadows around;
Grunting, muttering shades,
Demons corrupted by pain,
By fear, by the taint
Of broken bloated bodies.
They seek to infest, infect,
Reclaim this healed carapace,
This newly erupted butterfly,
This sweet, sweet flower,
This bead of starlight on the back
Of a drip drop of rain on the windowpane,
This new me
But I have become a force
Of nature; the sun, the moon,
The wind that surges from the dunes,
The sea that laps the feet of the shore,
The trees, the green blades of grass
Waving at the sky,
The very air that you breathe.
I have become everything.
PS: , Benin City is beautiful and wet and muddy and stressful but I love it. This is my reply to your nomination. I have nothing further to add.