Greatness is a Survival Story
When you were born, your body was offered to God –
the priest held you in the air before the congregation,
before the altar, and there, surrender your life. The man
of God said, he saw greatness in your eyes and your
mother grew a butterfly and named you Emmanuel. As your
days became to stretched, your mother didn’t know she couldn’t
live to see her crying baby walk with smiles planted on
his face out of secondary school. Or that of his father that
was going to be missing for a time long like forever. She would
feel sorry to also know that her father’s daughter would grow tire
of calling you son and misnamed you, yet you kept your body. The
priest didn’t do well, he should’ve told her greatness is a survival story.
Glossary of Things We Inherited
| Terms | Operational definition |
| abomination | this time a man gun did not mistake a man for an animal but, another man offered his daughter to a rich man for a reasonable price, learning slavery from his ancestors. |
| brokenness | the streets bring back memory of the war – violence, you packed in a corner of the road to see how a boy hauled scissor out of his side to carve the body of another boy into wounds. |
| catastrophe | you know God’s angry when he steals the sun and send heavy rainfall. once it turned our home to pool & everything floated like the way a brother lost in the sea, was brought to the shore after two days. |
| darkness | after the civil war, we were found without form & void, darkness grew over the face of this city and we spoke light, till this day, our voices are still struggling for existence. |
| elegy | is another name given to a country who still knows nothing other than keeping homes of lifelessness in its body like a cemetery. today, i peel this country off my lip and replace it with nothing but watch if our wounds will heal out of time. |
| frustration | your phone waited for you to make your bed and walked out of the table, tore the window screen and found the street. never to return. |
| grief | when God gets tire with silence, he answers with grief. he inject it into the veins of our country till a boy couldn’t find his father after the war, a girl raped at 14 became mother & your mother jagged language still translate the anger in widowhood |
| hope | not everything falling beneath the ground is buried, some are seeds planted to grow into trees. hope is a metaphor for living in a broken country. |
Bio
Emmanuel G G Yamba writes from Monrovia, Liberia. He’s a graduate of the University of Liberia and SprinNG Advancement Fellowship. His work has been featured and forthcoming in The Shallow Tales Review, The MUSE, SprinNG, Inkspired, Funminiyi Anthologies, Libretto Magazine, Salamander Ink, African Writer, Kalahari Review, Odd Mag., Rigorous, TVO Tribe, Ibadan Arts, An anthology for Abunic and elsewhere. He’s on IG as yamba86163
