Growing Up

Nana T. Baffour-Awuah

We grow up believing

that our parents are invincible, only

to grow up and find that they are human:

flesh, blood, breakable bone.

Fallible and flailing

as we are

at the same age

that they were

when we first met.

Nana T. Baffour-Awuah (he/him) is a Ghanaian writer and editor currently based in New York. His poems, short stories, and essays have been published in Brittle Paper, Chronogram, Raven Review, African Writer, North Meridian Review, HuffPost, Sierra Nevada Review, and elsewhere. His work has also been anthologized, most recently in Creative Stillness (Gatekeeper Press, 2026) and Smitten with the Written (Arcana Poetry Press, 2026). Nana is a poetry editor for The Hummingbird and a reader for Callaloo. He is working on his first book. IG: @whatnanawrote

Growing Up

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