Becoming Without Permission

By Chukwudi Echendu

NO one tells you when you are becoming British.

It happens quietly—
in the way you start apologising for everything,
even the rain that you did not order.

In the way you understand queuing
as a moral philosophy. Rather than saying “I dey your back,” as we did back home.

In the way silence becomes your second accent.
But I am still African here
in the parts of me that refuse translation.

In the food I cook that smells like memory.
My colleagues bought a special microwave for my food at work.
The stank wore on their sandwich films and made them nauseous.

I am not one thing becoming another.
I am overlap of eating what they ate.
And some negotiations away from fitting in.

Echendu, a writer with focus on sharing his experiences through poetry and prose fiction, is the author of 48 Thoughts You Should Read that gives an identity to his craft