I am curled up under blankets
Surrounded by snot-filled tissues
Ginger tea that has long g
& what else becomes of a boy who must unlearn the language of flowers? He carries silence the way a river carries the dead with resignation.
She speaks to the air, and commands things to be
Borrowing from time’s closed pockets
To enrich the earth and make it better
lord, how many times have i prayed to crawl
back into my mother’s womb to be reborn as the sun?
If only, if only
we knew what it was
the meaning of life
and what it does.
her body speaks a language every fatherless home
in Makoko slums understands. The staple of fatherless children
is hardness, since the breadwinner has been baked by fate
I forgot how to inhale,
And the silence I felt,
Grew louder than his cries.
Tell me, why cling to what drags your feet
when you can rise—seven times, and again?
Just—
pause.
Pause.
Life will teach you that this
is the discography of your becoming, with
albums & EPs of chaos, & there is nothing
you can do about it, except to take a deep breath
