Read Time:2 Minute, 21 Second
God, there's a deity whenever your fingers caress the earth. Vibrissae love the subtle scent of air & that's what you give poking breath into my nostrils. I do not know if my hue says I was created in the absence of light, but I am dark. The myth book says the sky slitted & my brother flew here. In another chapter, my forefathers came out of an Iroko tree. Look how tall my sufferings stand, how long my endurance is. A lullaby of lamentation, I was created after a heavenly revelry: a dip of a liana into the mud & flung to the latitude line. Or was I a flawless cry until the serpent's first speech? Whether through divine breath or earth, blood is here in a body. Whenever I open my bone-made wardrobe, I am searching for connotation in my origin. Sleeve rolling–– there's an ongoing scrap to get better acquainted with the stiletto sluggishly slicing my wellbeing. I know sorrow as a slothful shift in the syllable of my breath towards silence. Sometimes, I haemorrhage into memory –– sharp & poignant–– where's my mother? I blinked my eyes & my mother's portrait on the wall is my ancestor's altar. I see a doctor twice a week, my lifespan reduces by 2 ounces. What kind of fervour makes my femur feeble for fever's fang? Somewhere, a terrorist is in the kitchen cooking fire to burn down a village. A man slaughtered a brother & said when we were yet sinners, God commanded that he be the Messiah, opening a slit to endings. Picture our life as an hourglass. A truckload stars surrenders to gravity. Here, men walk out to their hustling galaxies & return as cinders. I remember Tony who smoked into the sky on the protest mourning. He promised his mother Masa on his return: his first ever lamed promise. Voice shatters what doesn't look like a glass ––isn't this what death does? Man, you're a shadow song. However, hummed, someday, you will end on earth's tongue from which you were shaped like my mouth after words. Look at me–– the eagle, soaring as if it'll never perch. At the archway, this means peace: my coming to know I will not be around forever.
Blessing Omeiza Ojo is a Nigerian poet based in Abuja, where he spends most of his time teaching creative writing, crafting poetry, and guiding children to literary and art festivals. His poems have appeared in Frontier Poetry, Split Lip, The Shallow Tales, CỌ́N-SCÌÒ, The Deadlands, and elsewhere. He serves as the Abuja coordinator for the Hill-Top Creative Arts Foundation. Omeiza enjoys daydreaming about paradise where he embraces his resurrected loved ones. He is a winner of the 2025 Brigitte Poirson Literature Prize (2nd Runner-Up, Poetry).
