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By Dami Ajayi

 

 

 

 

 

You may have encountered them too.

Two black middle-aged men

on Wembley High Road

walking side by side,

portly with the accretions of age,

weathered faces, the visage of sage.

You may spot their striking similarities first,

then their milder differences:

how one is clean shaven &

the other wears a stubble.

They don’t smile often.

 

Science insists that monozygotic twins result

when a zygote cleaves after fertilisation

but cannot explain a lifetime of reparation,

cannot explain their affirmative reconciliation.

 

But the gods know

that a man or a woman

should not be alone so they privileged

these two, lifelong companions.

The Yoruba know, too,

the beauty of preordained mutualism

& deified the symmetry of twinning

& conjured a myth.

 

In Igbo-Ora,

every family is blessed

& visited upon by the god of twins,

but science insists that it must be their yams.

 

Black-eyed beans

slow cooked in red oil suffices,

the Yoruba burst into song,

preening with desire

for double blessings.

I know, too,

of the blessings they bring

as a sib preceding twins—

that privilege

is indeed my biggest win.

 From Affection & Other Accidents, first published in 2022 by RADI8 LTD

 

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