For Vivian Ify Ezeala (Vee)

I would not reduce you to metaphors

Or lyrics of a sad poem

Or one-day tears and indigestion/

I want to tell so much of want

and what it means to blend with grief/ cradle lostness

gently, gently/ like unrehearsed music

I want to embrace the rudiments of mourning

like a widowed wife/ tongue heavy   throat sour

and the words failing to hinge like your laughter

a day before you slipped with the night/ ha ha ha

At your funeral two women roll bodies in the mud/

two men are forcing them up/ a priest

is declaring you dead/ and your body is being lowered

six feets from my ankle/

I want to tell you that I have prepared two holes

for my knees/ beside your grave

& a passage door for our leaving.

I want to say: come, hold these palms

so they never get cold again and even if they do

you’ll breathe and laugh ha ha ha

because I’ll be gone, not you.

Biography

Iheoma Uzomba is currently a student of English and Literary Studies at the University of Nigeria Nsukka. Her works feature on The Shore, Kissing Dynamite, The Rising Phoenix Review, Dreich Magazine, Fac-Simile Editions and elsewhere.