Hedgerow

by Chioma Odukwe


She left her handkerchief with her name, written, embroidered as a reminder that I did not fall from the sky.

She plucked the scab of shame left behind from the loss she felt when I was snatched away, taken to homes with motherless babes where love is forbidden.

She left her flame braided onto my hair in wide rows, a vision she went through hell to keep me hidden in the heat of July.

She took the pain branded onto my skin so that I forget the clawing of her nails, when she refused to let go. She was dragged and beaten for bidding me goodbye.


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Chioma Odukwe is a poet and public servant from Houston, TX.  She currently lives and works in Japan. She actively strives to memorialize the mundane and remarkable events in her life through poetry. She draws her inspiration from the Harlem renaissance specifically from the works of Langston Hughes.  Her writing has been published by Washington Post and four of her poems are forthcoming in Eunoia Review and Academy of the Heart And Mind.