Last week, our neighbour's home blazed into chaos, and our house 
echoed with fear. A piece of land cut opened in their compound scared me,
its man's length and depth, ready to gulp a body. or let me say a soul. or the 
remains of a man. Silence filled everywhere like gasoline looking for a
lighter to boom, to slaughter the serenity —& their door turned a narrow 
mouth, swallowing crowds in black outfits and spitting them like a pregnant 
Woman.  grief became an art work on each face. It’s death. Someone sailed
away from our world again. The earth is hungrier than before, and I'm scared. 
I'm scared to unfurl into a firefly to light this room of nightmares, or trans–
mogrify into a fire breathing dragon to set these storms ablaze. Yesterday,
 a woman spoke to clothes as her husband, she told it not to let go; till an 
ambulance arrived. people sensed madness in her cologne, but I saw 
beyond the walls. I don't know what it’s called, is it grief?  These days, we count 
more dead bodies than money. we feed the earth more than we feed ourselves.
Here, butterflies don't wobble in our stomachs again. Maybe there's nothing 
named blushing under the sky of grief. or we've hung too much on butterflies 
 to unweight our loss. I wonder who created grief, and why he didn't add a cure.
So if it is grieving to make pictures an anthology of dead people, or to con–
fuse stars with souls in the night sky      and to mine fun from weeping; I'll call it
by name and await the storm to ferry me towards tenderness.

Biography

Wisdom Adediji is a genre bending writer from the city of Ibadan,  Southwest Nigeria. He is a lover of nature and art, who sees poetry as a way of life. His works have appeared or are forth coming in arcuute pen, one black boy like that review, world voices magazine and elsewhere. He is currently studying geography at the university of Ibadan, and writes from there. When he’s not writing, he his either reading, talking, sleeping or thinking. meet him on Instagram @wisdomadediji7.