For the times my baby’s arms don’t feel like home
.
“Depression is being colorblind & constantly told how colourful the world is”- Atticus.
.
Sometimes;
-I’m a city with blind streetlights
Sitting at the edge of a seashore
With the weight of the world crashing into me.
-I let the wind fill my body
With something broken, lonely & lost
Something too lame to walk a sojourner home
-I fold the little light, left in my veins
Into a dark room with unseen creatures
You never can tell where healing would find you.
-I let the moon name my body
After boys who get away from the crowd
To hear the footsteps of their emptiness.
You think love is enough to turn your heart
To a boat, rowing you to places where
Sunset blends with the colour on God’s skin?
But the night would mock the aloneness
Of your shadow, even in the presence of the stars.
Depression is a disease, sometimes love isn’t her therapy.
I’m a broken mirror, but my lover said
She sees the most beautiful of her images through me
She calls me love-ful names- say ‘honey’, ‘temi’,’olowo ori mi’ & ‘ololufe’
Names too beautiful for boys like me to bear
Boys, emptying their tongues into rivers
To carve God from wandering songs
But, sometimes I do not feel the same way
& i do not know why her arms feel like a city on hell’s tongue
Why my mind is on the tenth floor, leaving her in the first
Why my body sometimes seeks refuge in solitude
& in things that hides behind heaven’s veil.
Just yesterday, the doctor diagnosed me of depression
He said the only cure for my ailment
Is to break free from the chains holding me
From the silence creeping into my lungs
With tales of men like my father
Whose favourite colour is the colour of grief,
& to explore the world from an angle
Adjacent to the beauty of places
Where everything carries the images of home.
About the Author:
Here’s yet another undeniably talented literary icon with the rare capacity to understand the language of silence and hear when the eyes speak.
Olabisi Abiodun Akinwale is a Nigerian poet and writer, who hails from
Boripe local government area of osun state. He is a graduate of
mathematics from Federal University Lafia, Nasarawa state. His poems
have been published on Dwart magazine, Tuck magazine, Expressit,
Tushstories, Aceworld among others, and have featured in some
anthologies too. He’s currently under the NYSC scheme, serving in
Enugu State, Nigeria. He goes by the pen name; Undiluted Poet. Indeed, his art can be described as raw creativity which transcends beyond the usuals..
