The Woman Who Keeps Names by Gloria Ogo

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At the river’s edge, my mother warned me never to answer a woman

who calls your name from the water. Not because she is dead.

Because she is not. She comes at dusk

when the mangroves loosen their roots and the river begins to remember

everything it has swallowed.

She has no wings.

She wears a dress the color of drowned leaves,

and beads that knock softly against her throat when she laughs.

You will know her by the sound. Not beautiful.

More like a spoon striking the bottom of an empty pot.

She will ask you where you are going.

This is the first trick. She already knows.

She will ask whose child you are.

This is the second. She wants to hear whether you still belong to anyone.

My mother said: Do not tell her your name.

Do not tell her your father’s name.

Do not tell her the name your grandmother called you

when she wanted the dead to listen.

And if she offers you fruit, let it rot in her hand.

If she offers you gold, let it sink.

If she asks you to cross

run.

But I was sixteen

and sixteen is an age when warnings become invitations.

So when the woman stepped from the black water

with riverweed wound around her ankles, I did not run.

She held out one wet hand.

In her palm was a small white tooth.

Mine. I knew it immediately.

I had lost it when I was seven, beneath the mango tree,

and my mother had buried it, so another child would not find it

and grow beautiful with my luck.

See? the woman said.

You have been leaving pieces of yourself everywhere.

Behind her, the river opened. Not widened.

Opened.

A seam pulled through the earth.

On the other side were houses with blue doors,

children sleeping upside down from trees,

goats with human eyes,

and an old man carrying a lantern full of stars.

My mother is ninety now.

When she comes to the river

she leaves millet cakes on the bank

and calls me by the childhood name

she was forbidden to give away.

Sometimes I rise.

Sometimes I do not.

I have learned there are rules

even among monsters.

The woman never lies.

She only asks questions

whose answers change you.

And the river never takes anyone.

It only keeps

what we bring to it.

Bio

Gloria Ogo is a writer with several published novels and poetry collections. Her work has appeared in Eye to the Telescope, Brittle Paper, Spillwords Press, Metastellar, Gypsophila Magazine, Harpy Hybrid Review, Allegro Poetry Magazine, among others. She holds a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and served as a reader for Barely South Review. She is the winner of the Brigitte Poirson Literature Prize (2024) and a finalist for the Jerri Dickseski Fiction Prize (2024), the ODU Poetry Prize (2025), and the Rhonda Gail Williford Poetry Prize (2025), earning honorable mentions. She is also a finalist for the Lucky Jefferson Poetry Contest (2025). Her work was longlisted for the American Short(er) Fiction Prize (2025).

Author's note

My poem comes from the fantastical stories our African mothers would tell us growing up, especially the ones meant to keep us from talking to strangers or wandering too far from home. Mami Wata was always one of those figures that fascinated me. Whether the myth is true or not, there are people who swear they have seen her. I’ve always wondered, what if she really was real? What if, just once, I chose to heed her call? That question became the starting point for this poem. I began to think of Mami Wata not only as a mythical figure, but as an embodiment of all the what ifs we carry, the things we wonder about, the people we lose, and the people who disappear without answers. In that sense, the poem also became an ode to the lost and missing among us.