Sometimes, when a flame tentatively kisses my fingertips, 

I like to hold it     there just for a little while longer

Feel what its like to be desired and hungered for.

I always bite myself awake

Clamp down hard into the smooth tenderness of an inner cheek

Pinch delicate skin between calloused thumb and index finger—

I greet dawn with an aching body

What’s a little hurt in a cruel life?

Here’s a world where pain does not have a mother

So it transforms into a wild, wild child

Intense, unrestrained and artless in its viciousness.

Everything I touch decays, just a little

Maybe I wield ruination in my fingertips

I choke on all the love I will never hold.

All that kills is dying & I’m never without scars and wounds 

Take for example, right now, I have gaping holes for thighs

Have you ever tried walking with gaping holes for thighs?

You wobble and blood spurts everywhere and it’s so much mess and 

This is what I do to a home, a body.

Teach me, how to breathe in(to) this chaos,

to swallow wild air and make it mine. It’s so loud

inside me, sometimes, I think it aches 

’cause the noise is struggling to seep out,

Diffuse into this quiet I’m grasping unto. I try 

so hard, not to stain this space with my messy unraveling. Please

hold my hand and flow

stillness into my fluttering limbs

I want to learn the art of silence, how to lull my body into peace

Quiet the screams dancing, bouncing off the walls        in my head. 

Is it me or is there a little too much        light, in here?

“MORNING RITUAL AND HOW TO CONTAIN CHAOS,” is an honorary mention for the 2024 Akachi Chukwuemeka Prize for Poetry.

Biography
Aishat Yahkub is a young Nigerian creative, writer, poet, bookworm, art lover and overwhelmed medical student. Her poems appear in Brittle paper, Agbowó, Fiery scribe review, Juste literary and elsewhere. Her works explore the body as a space striving to contain devastating chaos, the fluidity of identity, language and the portrayal of “home”, through her cast of outcasts. When she’s not reverentially appreciating exquisite poetry and art, she practices stillness and escapes into dreams. She’s overcoming her mild social (media) anxiety by tweeting @AishatYahkub.