Anika Christopher is a poet and children’s author based in Roadtown, British Virgin Islands. Anika is currently working on her first ever poetry collection which will be released next year, and so today we have a sample of her brilliant work.
Daily Bread
Every day, my grandmother walked out the house,
walked into the soft cries of children
abandoned by their mothers, into hungry mouths
and turned the lights back on,
into the sun with her back bent,
breaking like cassava bread,
into her house again, into hot cornmeal.
into her children and children’s children,
into her own empty hand
A hand that couldn’t close.
My grandmother never closed,
her feet dragged like a swollen door frame.
Knock and she’ll open herself to you.
Her calves were two loaves of bread.
her broad back a table.
Seek and she’ll build a whole house for you.
My grandmother never stopped working,
never stopped turning stone to bread,
never stopped turning her tough life away from us
turning the wet dough of her face into a smile
The day my grandmother died,
she walked out the house,
and into her clothes that calcified in plastic bags
into strangers who wanted to wear her,
carry her on their backs,
like she did for them.
The day my grandmother died,
people kept walking in and out
the house, breaking light for a woman.
Anika M. Christopher