You tell me when you get off the oil ship at Takoradi,

where you’ve washed your hands with shellfish, where air rolls 

through your nostrils, hits your eyes hard, lights your bunker,

you tell me you’ll swallow dirt and rub small stones over your brows, walk on the white lines of the street 

barefoot, stand in front of your house gate At 6 am to shout oblayo shew with mama Esther who sells cooked cracked corn (porridge);

the shrill in the voice you missed in your dark bunker. You chuckle, pat my arm, Afia, i’ll gather my friends like dirty harvested yams 

We’ll go to Osu and listen to young girls weigh dollars in their waist. We’ll hit our empty stomach and eat smoked snails whole.  

Leaving

for Accra, I pack Everything but my love  For the place that will now hold me  Still. I pack toothpaste and white slippers A brown blanket I won at a concert  A picture of two older women I helped  A bottle of medication i forgot to take I pack myself with all the memories I could store, like a neatly arranged fridge  Or a warehouse, ready for shipping I tell the mice, who i have not seen for days That I am leaving, I don’t let the humans know They make a fuss of nostalgia  I make the mice think i’m dead

I leave Ayo a note under his apartment Door. I don’t tell you what is written on it. But I say all the things a woman must say to keep a man afloat and I say I will return to him  If he keeps the letter close I mean to say I lie well when it means saving a man 

 I tell my father it is a call The thing that loves us calls us home I do not return in light of the chaos Of the weight of not being understood Frantically, I am not being forced out  There is enough land on this earth, made to hold me. 

Debt of Omission

Once they capture the ===== woman and drag her back onto the ship, they tie her legs alongside and the process of cutting in begins. They lower a wooden platform called “an auction stage” into place over the side of the ship and place the ===== woman above it. The captain and mates climb out with cutting spades mounted on long poles to begin slicing her stomach. They try their best to avoid the intestines while reaching for the u=====.

They carry the w=== on board in huge slabs in its pear shape, 7.6 centimeters long 4.5 centimeters broad, these are her “harvest pieces. ”The captain selects the best looking men on board for mating. For incubation, the harvest pieces will be kept in glass cases for eight months.

When the children are ripe, they break the cases or their bones or their necks.

When the ship arrives on land, they settle the children on plantations, offer them as extended hands to farmers.

  In 1829, Captain Shepherd was crushed to his death when three women set themselves on fire; a fire that snapped and caught Shepherd’s huge blanket burning him into pieces while he slept. (Even this process could be deadly for the w==== man.)

Once the w==== cooled down their bones were stowed away at the bottom. The crew could then head to their bunk for a well deserved rest until the cry of “there she blows” brought them back on deck.

  If the crew were not sure that a ===== was dead they poked her eyes with a knife before throwing her off board.