The beginning of this phase eludes me.
But know this, everything started dying/ started losing
the hold of sense — a rose, without its pigment.
First, it was the drive to empty the body of god.
The desire to shut the body tight of any whimper/
To wrap the body with silence like a new Nigerian-wax wrapper mother loved.
There’s a way this body longs for quietude like the stillness of a limp & tired body/
The roughness of a gelded verse /The un-moving of collected water
At the middle of a potholed road.
You must think I do not remember *màámi & sìstá mi in this void
I plough like an overgrown field
I remember, the last time I laid out the ache
In my heart for them to see me & how I wish(ed) to end it all.
The only language that shot out of their lips like bullets was:
How old are you? You are just nineteen *nítorí olórun
You are too young for that!
Friends attempt to ease the wound with the softness of words
& words sometimes are gravitated birds, falling back
To the land they fly away from. Words are weak like the schwa sound/
Like the fragile bones of infants & This craving = steel
& now morning doesn’t come with healing in its mouth.
Light can be metaphor for perfection, for broken chains, for laughter.
But in truth, light lays us bare in all the ways
We are broken/ imperfect/ dark & without grace. I’m still searching in this body
Where even a brief note & rhythm of love strike. So far it’s been futile.
This soul is a sad song/ piece[s]

Of melancholy & darkness sewn into skin.

& nobody knows the depth of the wound.
But still I breath & live another day,
My father needs to meet his son whole’.

The line in italics is culled from Nome Emeka Patrick’s A poem for the nearly damned
*Mother & Sister
*For God's sake.