Good writers are not all so good because they have lived poetic lives. As a matter of fact, most good writers I know spent the genesis of their careers thinking themselves losers. 

My father, Sunny, an anxious teenager, skin the color of ripe plantain, on some days from eating too much of it, on others from resembling his mother so dramatically he defied the igbo saying—oyirinna’ya, o me ka’nneya.

My father resembled his mother in skin and character. And I resembled him likewise. 

Possessed as he was by his love for art, Sunny once decided to mural a village masquerade onto his parents’ bedroom floor—Ijele.

A mighty horse towering fifteen feet tall with a giant python wrapped around its center so that it was divided into two halves. 

The upper half ethereal, a jazzy show of 45 smaller masquerades swirling and stunting so that Ijele looked like a million-headed beast. The stick necks of the masquerades spinning like rifles on their shoulders, thundering their arms into an endless dance and their feet into rigorous kicks. 

This unanimous chaos sat beautifully on the lower half, colorful, bright; when you set eyes upon the horse, it seemed Ijele stood perfectly, mounted upon the rising sun.

Now, what they do not tell you about resembling your father is that his beauty will be your beauty and his fuckups your fuckups. That one cool evening, while the wind clapped like children at the playground and dancing dust smelled like groundnut, Sunny, your father, sneaked out of a family gathering to fill his palm with a generous sum of his mother’s hard-earned charcoal and, relishing in his victory, dashed into the master bedroom of his parents’ house in Festac, lifted the raffia table behind their wardrobe, and traced out a portion of the floor with charcoal. 

That every evening, while his siblings rallied around the black-and-white TV and yelled for an extra portion of jollof rice, Sunny crawled into his parents’ room, lifted the raffia table he had placed over his newfound spot, and pressed the black of charcoal unto his father’s wooden floor. 

This was not the day they almost killed him, tawaishing his bare buttocks with atarodo and aiming to jam his head to the wall. 

No, that happened on an entirely new, good day—the after-party of nkwo festival. 

Sunny, after cold long nights of welding coal to make his art, smuggled his mother, his twin, behind their far-stretched wardrobe and lifted the raffia table to disclose his mural of Ijele to her. 

“Surprise!” wiggled out his mouth like a worm.

His mother journeyed her eyes around the glamorous display of artwork and bringing Sunny into the warmth of her hug subtly admonished:

“Take water from the kitchen, scrub it off. You are a doctor, a professor, not a roadside artist.”

Sunny hurried out the room in tears and did not return that night from the bush, where he watched Ijele perform like a spineless horse for the nkwo festival. 

He wanted to tell his Ma that all art did not end up by the roadside, some art ended up by the bush but everyone privileged to make and take art was oh so lucky…

He did not wipe off the black from the wooden floor that night, or go to church the next morning to break holy communion. So he knew by this mild act of revolution that he was half-dead and, of course, Sunny’s father confirmed it to him on his return. 

What they do not tell you about these things is that you will try for years to be a doctor yourself. Printing A’s on your score sheets and balancing a stethoscope from the nape of your neck even if the smell and thought of a cadaver made you angry. 

That July the 20th of 2017, you will return home to your father partially prepared for a revolution. Medicine had always been the course of your dreams but art… art was the arc of your reality. 

You did not need to say a word on your return anyway, because your father welcomed you with open arms, and although he did not smile from his eyes you knew he recognized what portion had befallen your spirit. 

Ijele, he says, means infinite journey. He is tucking your duvet into the frame of your bed as he validates you with his eyes. 

What they do not tell you is that on your first day in your new university, starting your own infinite journey on an entirely different continent, an ocean and two seas away from home, Sunny, your Professor father will appear on the screen of your art history lecturer’s projector, reading an excerpt from his dissertation on the significance of the biggest masquerade in sub-saharan Africa: the Ijele. 

You will look at that masquerade on your lecturer’s screen and it will resemble your father—an uncommon man, a revolutionary, the masquerade of all masquerades. Ijele himself. 

Good writers are not all so good because the days and nights that grazed their lives were stuffed with multifaceted rhythms like poetry. 

Dear readers, good writers themselves are, in fact, the poetry.