Recollections II

For a friend. For Kafaya.

Aging is quite cruel.
& grief is a small room, a shoe, a set of milk teeth
You never outgrow, it never falls off
As memory never fails you
As language does to a body empty of god,
The way chattering and your high pitched voice left you.
I don’t know how it works or why I’m fashioned that way,
But I’ve come to realize that a wound reopened
Stings me more— two shot in the same spot.
& what breaks open a scar if not remembrance? 
A new bleeding taking space & shape.
It is Friday & I picture you still stuck beneath
That bus, caught under that danfo till it became
Unbearable for you. Till you could hold it no longer
And let out the last whimper in the hospital
Just adjacent the school that same Friday
When you had gone out for the Jimoh prayer.
No one saw all of this coming and no one knew you were leaving.
Some of us saw all of it and some heard.
We thought you’d return to us but, like the bird
Noah sent the last time from the ark, you never did.
It’s nine years now, after primary six, the adhan calling
To prayer and I still find you bleeding. Salaam to all my dead.

Dawn

For Toheeb and others

This time, we’d begin with laughter filling out mouth
The way light floods a room when NEPA do not flop.
I mean we’d be bright as the unravelling of leaves
On a tree once bare of its glory.
The day will go on as it should, no one
Would drown in the pool of anxiety about what route
The next meal would take to his table
& night too would come calling as the beacon
For a good rest— saviour of a weary body,
Not a threshold into burning weeds and offering throats
To the burns of liquor. Maybe the days
Would be gentle on us like breeze on skin.
& life will be something soft like the insides 
Of white Agege bread on our tired palms.
& our stories would take another turn towards dawn.

Falling

Burning out steadily, like a candle with a lit head
The poem begins with my suffering. I should be 
Happy. I think I should be. Not this broken.
Not this sad with a glow, dimming.
Addiction is to the body what fire is to wax.
& I am searching for balance in the wrong places/things.
Talking about what you love the most can also hurt you,
The way a fish won’t believe what water could do
It’s tender skin when heated to a boiling. 
I mean, I am falling apart. 
I am dying in the hands of what I love the most— love
& addiction. I think I am soaring too far. The pills keep me high.
The fall is imminent. I know this
In the way mourning trails a loss
You don’t know, love
How much this laughter and smiles camouglages.
One pill to silence the voices up there.
To shut the demons out
One shot to drown paranoia in waters.
Two shot to unremember the ache.
& half a bottle to not feel. To tuck them feelings away.

Ayiyi Joel, TPC XVI is a young budding poet from Edo state in Nigeria.