I Like…

Odogwu,

I like the wiggle of you under my skin, carving your space in the swirl of cells and blood and bone and white, cold hunks of fat. I like to think I too have a space just inside the dermis, atop the blood pump in the third to sixth intercostal spaces, above the thrusts and rhythms of the life you’ve made for me.

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Never.

I bury another Never
Watching it slink into the soil
As I cover it with the sand under the shadow of your face.
I look at the ruins of my fences and defences,
Strong and defiant a week ago,
Crumbled in the earth after you strode in,
Arms akimbo, pockets brimming with keys to secrets,
The secrets I didn’t even know I held.

What Is This?

 

I want to tell you everything, the awesome and the mundane,

To tell you about the ant crawling through the hair on my arm

To whisper about the ache of missing you,

Is this what love is?

Home?

I had always thought of home as a series of addresses.
Houses with keys, my loved ones lugged in their pockets.
Rooms with corners lined with memories.
Favourite books in shelves older than me,
With the scent of camphor and old paper,
Dancing in my nostrils, sparking orgasms in my brain.

Found And Lost.

I miss your name between my lips,
The lilt of it when I am happy,
The rumble when I am angry
The thin whisper when the world sits on me.

Finding the Dream

 

Laying dreams on the table,
Spreading them out to shine or sparkle.
Drawing patterns with bare feet on the sands of paradise
With my mother’s voice in my head,
To tie me to shore despite the calls of the sea.
Carrying the weight of joy and freedom,
Singing as I shed the coil of twos
Dancing as I wear the sheen of threes
Wallet folds its arms
And laughs with twisted mouth
I shut my eyes and tend fragile hopes
And continue to believe
There’s something missing in these pictures.
Me.

Saint John one of the Virgin Islands inconstituent district of the United States Virgin Islands (USVI), an unincorporated territory of the United States. The smallest of the main US islands besides Water Island, Saint John is located about four miles east of Saint Thomas, the location of the territorys capital, Charlotte Amalie.

Dry Bones

Because we who had been furious storm

And peckish flame,

And crackling thunder,

And lashing volts of electricity.