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Indigenous.
Fatihah Quadri
You have your mother's thighs; the kind that men search for in dreams,
wake up feeling sweaty.
The kind that scares your brother in the living room. You are a silent fire,
another word for Fitna.
Your city is a war zone, your uncles grow up fighting people they do not know,
they take blades to mosques and smuggle daggers into churches.
They hide knives in the heart of a small bible. They return home missing,
return home smelling of bombs. Now the camera looks deep into your face;
a sudden glitch, tells you to narrates home in a single sentence.
Your mouth, the taste of fermented grief.
Fatihah Quadri Eniola is a Nigerian page and performance poet who uses poetry as a tool for advocacy. She is a strong advocate for gender equality, human rights, and community issues. Fatihah is the winner of the inaugural Pawner's Paper Performance Poetry Prize for Peace and the 2025 Centre for Black Art and African civilization Poetry Prize, among other accolades. Her works have been published in Torch Literary Arts, The West Trade Review, South Florida Poetry Journal, and more. She has a background in Law from the University of Ibadan. She tweets @fatihahquadri