Who Gets Credit for Courage?

Two poems by Shakirat Ayodeji Bioku

After someone survives a frightening experience, we often describe the pain as character-building. The compliment is meant for the person, but the credit goes to the ordeal.

In The Other Side of Easy, Shakirat Ayodeji Bioku considers the difficult roads we choose and the selves we might discover along them. Yet her speaker insists, “I do not worship struggle.” What I Learned in the Dark makes that distinction more urgent. Here, familiarity gives way to fear, and survival becomes the immediate concern. The courage the speaker discovers was hers before the ordeal.

 

Together, the poems question our habit of treating hardship as the author of courage. Suffering may reveal strength without deserving credit for it.

 

THE OTHER SIDE OF EASY

 

I have an odd relationship

with difficult things.

They scare me.

Then they interest me.

 

There is a part of me

that wants to know

what happens

when the road becomes hard.

 

My father taught me

not to confuse

the popular direction

with the right one.

 

If everyone is moving

one way,

I want to know

why.

 

If everyone chooses

the comfortable option,

I want to know

what discomfort

might be trying to teach.

 

I have walked towards

things that frightened me

simply because

I wanted to meet

the person I would become

on the other side.

 

Difficulty reveals things.

It shows you

how much patience

you actually have.

How much courage.

 

How creative

your survival can become.

How many times

you can hear,

 

No,

 

and still search

for another door.

 

I do not worship struggle.

Pain is not automatically

noble because it hurts.

 

But I respect

what resistance can reveal.

There are strengths

that comfort never introduces.

 

There are parts of yourself

you meet only

when the plan breaks.

 

I have met some of mine.

And now,

when the road becomes hard,

I do not immediately

assume I have chosen wrong.

 

I ask,

 

What is this asking

me to become?

 

I have stopped believing

that every hard road

is a punishment.

Some roads

are simply classrooms.

 

WHAT I LEARNED IN THE DARK

 

There are nights

the body remembers

long after the mind

has changed the subject.

 

I have one of those.

 

It began

with a familiarity

I had never thought

to question.

 

A face I knew.

 

A name that belonged

inside the circle

of people I trusted.

 

Then something shifted.

 

Not loudly.

Not in a way

that gave the room

time to warn me.

 

Just enough

for familiarity

to become fear.

 

There are moments

when the world

shrinks to one question:

 

What do I do now?

 

I did not have time

for the luxury

of falling apart.

 

Fear was there.

 

I was too.

 

And somewhere

between the two,

my instincts woke up.

 

I watched.

I listened.

I thought.

 

I found the small,

steady part of myself

that knew

I had to protect her.

 

There is a kind of strength

nobody teaches you about—

the strength of remaining

inside your own mind

when fear is trying

to take the whole room.

 

I remember

how quickly everything

became about awareness.

 

A movement.

A sound.

An opening.

 

The next second.

Then the next.

 

I do not remember

the experience

as a lesson I wanted.

 

I remember it

as something

I survived.

 

And there is a difference.

 

Because survival

does not mean

the moment did not hurt.

 

It means the moment

did not get

the final word.

 

I still believe

there are parts of us

we meet only

when life becomes frightening.

 

Not because we were weak

before the fear arrived,

but because certain strengths

remain invisible

until they are needed.

 

That night

introduced me

to one of mine.

 

I discovered

that courage does not always

look like standing tall.

Sometimes it is simply

refusing to disappear

inside your fear.

 

Sometimes it is

thinking when panic says

stop.

 

Sometimes it is

choosing yourself

in a moment

when someone else

has forgotten

your right to choose.

 

I wish I had never

needed to learn that.

 

But I did.

 

And now I know

 

there are things

that can frighten me

without owning me,

things that can wound me

without defining me,

and moments

that can change my story

without becoming

the whole story.

 

I walked away

knowing something

I had never known before:

 

the person I needed

in that moment

was already inside me.

 

I carry that knowledge

quietly now,

not as a wound

I must keep touching,

but as a reminder

that I know how to find myself

when the world becomes uncertain.

ABOUT THE POET

Shakirat Ayodeji Bioku is a multidisciplinary artist, poet and performer whose creative practice draws on storytelling, oral tradition, theatre, traditional cultural dance and spoken word. She began her performance journey creating and delivering celebratory eulogies and performing in local theatre. Her writing explores family, identity, courage, love, resilience and becoming. She has performed on stages across Nigeria, bringing the intimacy of poetry into live performance.