father and son
Not exactly a eulogy. This is a powerfully touching poem by a son who has just lost a father he never knew. By Jay Sukpa

Thesis of a Boy Who Learns His Father’s Age on the Front Page of an Obituary

  1. On the day he dies,
    You will hear the air around you wrap itself into a prayer bead,
    As if nature pauses to make Dua for the life he lived.

You will wonder if these strangers spend their tears on a different death,
If they truly mourn a man
Who ghosted long before his body abandoned earth.

  1. Someday,
    You will see the full moon in your twin sister’s eyes
    And recognize why mama stares at them a little too much.
    This is how she finds her way through the dark.

Someday,
You will hear a call in her laughter
To let go of your adolescent anger and forgive your father,
Because maybe all this while
Daddy was only trying to teach you a lesson about roots,
Trying to help you see how you belonged
To an ancestry of athletes—
Men who ran from responsibility for a living.
And he just wasn’t ready
To watch an ancient tradition die in his hands.

  1. You won’t care
    About roots,
    About how every complimentary “him carry him papa leg”
    Sounds like a prophecy waiting to happen.

The absence in your chest
Sings a fire alarm
Each time you think of having kids of your own.

But you’re a poet,
And no one cares what you feel outside your own flesh.
So play deaf.

I’m a poet,
And all that matters
Is cutting your father into metaphors to prove a point.

So this one time,
I imagined having my first daughter.
I imagined holding this pretty, little, vulnerable work of art in these hands,
Imagined hearing her cry for the first time—
How it sounded like Aretha Franklin in her prime.
This was the most soulful music I’d ever heard.

I imagined looking into her eyes,
But instead of blacks and whites,
What I saw was tradition staring back at me,
With a smile that reminded me of the battles I chose to run from.

Right there, I realized—
Being vulnerable has nothing to do with size.

I called her Light,
For she was the creator’s tool
For shaping the formlessness
And filling the void that ruled my deep—
His way of helping me see the shadows and greys I’d kept in the dark,
Braille for the parts of me I turned a blind eye to.

The first time she smiled at me,
I was caught between emotions:
Fulfillment and fear.

Fulfilled from the fact that, although it took nine months and a collaboration,
Like the ultimate creator,
I made woman in my own image,
After my likeness,
And I saw that it was good.

Fear because where I come from, good things don’t last.
And out of the seven billion specimens on earth,
This work of art is the very least I’d want to be modeled after my likeness.

Soon,
I’ll have to protect her—
Not just from the terror that walketh by day,
Nor the pestilence that finds expression in darkness,
But from my own self,
And the possibility that I might let this work of art down
While trying to raise her the right way,
That I might ravage and gift her debris
To the same scavengers I once protected her from.

One day,
She’ll learn the words of her fatherland enough to call me “father.”
And right there, instead of running like I’d always done,
I’ll look soul deep into the reflection of me in her eyes,
And pray for courage enough to be
Something I never had for myself.

On the seventh day of March, 2021,
When my father rested,
I saw in between my mother’s tears
A summary of my father’s legacy written in bold text.

And this is what it said:
“Dear son,
Your daddy never gave you the chance to be a son;
This is not the man I want you to become.”

Jay Sukpa
Jay Sukpa

Jay Sukpa is a spoken word poet, musician, and storyteller with a passion for addressing mental wellness, social justice, masculinity, and political activism—all through the lens of family dynamics and personal experience. Drawing from real-life stories and extensive research, his work builds bridges, challenges narratives, and confronts systemic injustices.

Proud of his roots, Jay embodies the belief and is a testament that "something good can come out of Nazareth." His poetic journey, deeply influenced by Suli Breaks, has earned him notable accolades, including winning the inaugural Lagos Books and Arts Festival Poetry Slam 2024 (The Kayode Aderinokun poetry prize), and placing first runner-up in the Lagos International Poetry Festival Slam 2023, amongst others. Jay’s journey is a testament to resilience, faith, and the transformative power of storytelling.

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