The sun hadn’t even yawned yet when Friday was already on the move, barefoot on the red dust of Eziobodo. His cooler bounced against his thigh, a symphony of clinking bottles and sweating sachets. He wore a faded polo that read Poetry Meets Children, the "P" almost gone, like a dream half-erased by reality.

“Pure wata! Chilled minerals! Refreshment for body, refreshment for soul!”

That was Friday’s chorus.

Each sachet of water came with a folded note—his scribbled verses, written in pidgin-English, often smeared with ink or dew. “Dem say I no sabi English, but I sabi pain,” one customer once read aloud, tears mixing with the malt she bought.

He’d smile shyly, rubbing the scar behind his ear, the only souvenir from Jos that didn’t bleed.

“Dem kill my papa for Jos, the unknown gunmen dem” he once whispered to a curious customer. “Mama follow drink bullet. Na only me waka come Owerri.”
The woman had no change for her Coke. He gave it anyway. “Just help me read the poem inside. Na from my heart.”

My parents were killed in a poem Jos never finished

Now I write so the silence won’t win. 

Drink Coke to refresh your body,

Read poetry to refresh your soul. 

Friday lived in a face-me-I-face-you beside a mechanic workshop where mosquitoes sang lullabies. He dreamt under zinc sheets, often with a pen in hand and a mosquito coil burning at the edge of his last stanza.

He had dreams. Simple ones.

Go back to school, finish his education, get his degree.
Print a book of poems and call it Water for Garri.
Start a street initiative called Poetry Meets Hustle—for kids like him, who sold to survive, but wrote to stay alive.

He wasn’t looking for fame. Just meaning.

“I wan matter,” he once told a hairdresser who always bought LaCasera. “Even if na only one person dey remember say I dey.”

That morning, he danced across the road near the campus roundabout, cooler balanced expertly like a crown. “Refreshment for body, refreshment for—”

Screech.
Screams.
The sound of scattered sachets.
Silence.

A bus. Failed brakes. Chaos.

Blood mingled with sachet water. Pages scattered. A boy and his dreams lay flat on the floor.

Students screamed. Someone cried, “Na the poetry boy!”

They rushed him to the teaching hospital. The doctor came out an hour later, face carved from worry. “Spinal trauma. Left leg shattered. He’s conscious, but... he might not walk again.”

Inside, Friday blinked slowly at the white ceiling.

“Doctor,” he whispered. “Abeg, check my bag. My poems dey inside.”

The nurse wiped a tear. “You’ll be okay,” she said.

He smiled, cracked lips bleeding slightly. “I no sure. But maybe... I go see Mama soon.”

A pause.

Then he chuckled weakly. “Na only in poem person dey walk on broken spine.”

The quietness in the room sang lullabies.

But even now, outside the ward, one of his notes lay open on the floor. It read:

If I die today, let my last breath rhyme.
If I live, let me still sell hope for N50 per line.

And underneath it, in his not so perfect handwriting:

“Refreshment for body. Refreshment for soul.” — FridayfromJos.