POV: Zariah Nduka
The mic was warm in her hand. Not from heat, but memory.
Zariah Nduka stood at the center of the Harlem venue, bathed in amber light, her afro braided into a crown, her dark skin glowing against the stage's black backdrop. She didn't pace. She didn't fidget. She waited. Let silence kiss the room. Let breath become anticipation.
"The boys who learned to bite their tongues," she said. Her voice was calm, measured. The room stilled like prayer.
And then she began.
They told him "Don't cry, bruv."
Wipe that water off your face before it drowns your pride.
She watched as heads nodded in rhythm. As a man in the third row leaned forward, hands clasped. As someone in the back whispered, "Mmm."
He watched uncles sip pain straight from the bottle. He learned that rage was just sadness in a sharper suit.
Words had always been her first weapon. And first balm. She didn't just write poems; she carved portals. She gave shape to ghosts. Her voice didn't rise—it rippled.
When the piece ended, the room was so silent you could hear the walls breathing.
Then: applause. Loud, sharp. Honest.
Zariah smiled softly and nodded. She didn't bow. She didn't need to.
7:12 AM – Harlem, Manhattan
The morning began with sun.
Zariah sat in the window of her cousin Ife's apartment, sipping lemon tea and annotating Audre Lorde in the margins of her journal. She wore a flowing mustard dress and gold earrings shaped like Sankofa birds. Her accent held its Lagos root, filtered through the street-swagger of East London.
She had only been in New York for six days.
And she was already in love with its chaos.
"You're not writing about your ex again, are you?" Ife teased from the kitchen.
"I'm writing about truth," Zariah said without looking up. "Sometimes it wears his cologne."
Midday Wanders
Zariah didn't just tour cities. She studied their breath. She walked Harlem not like a tourist, but like someone listening to a heartbeat.
She bought okra from a street vendor and recited a few bars to two teens freestyling near a stoop. She took the subway to Union Square, then backtracked to a quiet cafe in the Bronx just to jot down a line that floated into her head like divine static.
Poets didn't have routines. They had rituals.
By 6:00 PM, she was back in Harlem, sitting backstage, waiting to go on.
The host introduced her as: "The British-Nigerian wordsmith blessing this stage with truth and thunder. Give it up for Zariah Nduka!"
And she stepped forward.
7:59 PM
The poem had ended.
Zariah closed her eyes.
And then the world shifted.
It started as a vibration beneath her feet. Not from bass. Not from sound.
From something else.
She opened her eyes.
The stage lights flickered.
People gasped.
And then: silence.
Then the blast.
An invisible wave rippled through the building, bending time, space, memory.
Zariah was thrown backward. She crashed into a speaker. Her head slammed the wall. Shards of glass rained down from the ceiling.
But the real terror wasn't the explosion.
It was the silence that followed.
Too complete.
Too heavy.
Like the air had been stripped of its name.
Hospital Room – Late Night
Zariah woke to whispers.
But no one was speaking.
Her skin tingled. Her throat felt raw. Her ears buzzed, not from damage, but from volume she hadn't released.
A nurse hovered above her, asking questions.
"Can you hear me?"
Zariah nodded.
But when she tried to speak, the nurse winced. So did the heart monitor.
Her voice had made it spike.
Recovery
Zariah spent three days in the hospital.
She wrote when she could. Or tried. But every time she whispered a word aloud, objects moved.
The IV bag pulsed.
The window fogged.
Her breath—carried weight now.
On the fourth night, she whispered a prayer.
"Make me whole."
The room trembled.
She stood, slowly.
Faced the mirror.
"Hello," she said.
The mirror cracked.
Power Awakening
Back in Ife's apartment, Zariah ran experiments.
She recited old verses in a whisper: the air shimmered.
She hummed a melody: the potted plant on the windowsill turned toward her.
But the real revelation came when she revisited the poem.
THE BOYS WHO LEARNED TO BITE THEIR TONGUES
She spoke it with intent.
On the line: "He zipped up the softness. Taped it tight behind his ribs,"—she felt the air thicken.
A glass on the table cracked.
Her voice had become force.
Shape.
Truth not just heard, but felt.
She tested more.
An angry verse shattered a lightbulb.
A healing one put a crying baby to sleep in the apartment next door.
She realized: this was more than poetry.
This was creation.
Moral Dilemma
But with that came fear.
Words mattered now.
Casual comments sparked tremors. Sarcastic jokes bent shadows. A frustrated rant made a neighbor sprain her ankle.
Zariah stopped speaking for a day.
Then two.
She resorted to text. Hand gestures. Silence.
But her voice was her calling. Her protest. Her joy.
Was she supposed to stay quiet now that she could finally be heard?
On the fifth night, she performed again.
No stage.
Just her rooftop. The city below.
She stood, breathed deep, and said:
"This is for the ones who carry fire in their throats but were told to whisper."
The sky cracked.
Light bloomed at her fingertips.
Her voice didn't just echo.
It shaped.
Zariah Nduka realized that the revolution wouldn't be televised.
It would be spoken.
And she was the epicenter.