Those lucky Few by Femi Fatoba

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I am one of those lucky few

Who have no sense of smell:

When the boss demands

And sleeps with my wife

Let her come home for a bath

And put on her best clothes,

A promotion party does not smell;

When the Honourable Minister lures my daughter

And silences me with a contract award

It is a father’s reward

And it does not smell;

When I take my mother to the medicineman

For the money ritual

How do you expect me to remember

The smell of an umbilical cord

Severed years ago

Or that of the blood that binds

When I use my brother’s skull

For AWURE* soap?

I do not smell

Little children’s belch of hunger

When I snatch food from them To feed my dog;

I am one of those lucky few

Who have lost the sense of smell.