by Hassan A. Usman Kenrick Mills When we learn to spell joy , we lose our lips — our tongues perforated by grief. They said home is a place for merriment, but our meals poison the hand that made them. My mother applies a thick blush on her chin to withhold her cascading tears, yet is called tears of joy. This is the house that produced an album of my first cry, this bungalow, a nightingale; its strongest pillar, my father’s voice. It’s questioning how a bird sings, but spread