Longlisted/Shortlisted Poem: “The House That Ate Its Children”
ADEOSO SAMUEL OMOTAYO is a content creator, designer, and public speaker with over three years experience in visual storytelling, social media strategy, and video production. He blends creativity with purpose to inspire and engage audiences. A computer science student at Lagos State University, SAMUEL combines tech insight with artistic vision, creating content that connects culture, creativity, and impact. He is also a spoken word artist and climate change advocate.
The House That Ate Its Children
We were born in a house that coughs in its sleep,
roof bleeding rust, walls whispering warnings.
Here, silence is inherited!
A legacy of locked lips and lacerated hopes passed down
The door hinges, let out creaking sounds with testimonies ignored,
Every step a prayer unanswered.
Light knocks, but the windows are shut tight with laws that favor shadows alone.
In this house,
The doorbell is an echo, not a voice.
Its sound does not seek the truth
but obeys the weight of pockets.
One steals bread and is fed as prey
another dines on embezzlement,
drinks laws dry,
and hangs portraits in the courtrooms he bought.
The roof does not leak on the rich.
The wind avoids all their sins.
Their files fall through
cracks built precisely for that purpose.
But the children they bruise against verdicts
they never understood.
Before they learnt to write English language
They serve sentences written in silence
Some enter this house at twelve,
leave as ghosts at twenty-two,
with names dissolved in bureaucracy,
bodies stitched by neglect.
Here, justice wears a blindfold
stitched by the guilty, it sees gold not grief.
We are only allowed to speak in metaphors
because plain truth is dangerous.
We whisper because our words are evidence.
We survive in silence,
because we learnt that speaking up draws the wrong kind of attention.
And so, like pirates of pain, we bury our rage beneath our tongues like gold no one must find.
We do not die from injustice, we rot slowly under its Silence.