Saddiq Dzukogi, Winter 2017

Why I Will Enjoy Being a Girl
Saddiq Dzukogi

I’ll be unrestricted to leave
my face inside a mirror

for more than a minute
and nobody grows suspicious

I might like the boy next door
in fact I will love the boy next door

and mother will think it’s ok
what difference does it make now

I hide my warmth for him in a little diary
no one else but darkness has seen

it will be ok to let my senses over his lips
and drown my body in his mouth

it will be ok to want his night
and speak in undertones

there is no better way of escaping
the other things we can’t show

when we are out
a closed door won’t be the only witness

when I decide to invite a boy home

Saddiq Dzukogi studied at Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. He has poems featured or forthcoming in Pittsburgh Poetry Review, Vinyl, Chiron Review, About Place Journal, Cleaver Magazine, Juked, The Volta, and Grey Sparrow Journal, among others. He is the poetry Editor of the online journal, Expound. Saddiq was twice a finalist in the Association of Nigerian Author’s Poetry Prize.