Where might a man call a daydreamer’s lodge?
When he travels where shadows are oft not.
Could it be the leaky fragments of fudge?
Where his senses have been condemned to rot.
Adichie asked how a heart could break twice—
Yet here I am, atop splinters and shards.
Corpses of past hearts lay beneath the gneiss.
Shoring up my mind, like a house of cards.
And when their support eventually fails,
Agony will come, with her rusted nails.

I looked in your eyes and could taste your lips—
They tasted of suya laced with honey.
I enjoyed the slope of your tumbling hips,
And the pyramid slant of your belly.
I was summoned to that room filled with hawks,
Waiting for the point I would be devoured.
They engaged me in unexciting talks,
And asked if our union had been soured.
One of them asked that I leave you alone,
For this pairing caused her stomach to groan.

The mouse-whisper requests echoed loudest
In my inner mind, as I chewed kola.
“Would you come to see me?” asked the bravest,
As she chugged down a bottle of Cola.
“Do you want to make her your wife?” she asked—
Preventing her eyes from trysting with mine.
I knew my answer would leave her downcast,
Which would still find its way through the grapevine.
And when I returned to where I left you,
I saw you crying, and the world was blue.

I combed my fingers through your silky hair,
And wiped the tears that pooled beneath your lid.
I pitied the fool that entered my snare
By hurting you. And my eyes grew turbid.
You told me the things those boys said to you,
And they broke my heart just as they broke yours.
Your words that once tasted of honeydew,
Clogged up my ears with sorrowful wires.
I believed that I had left you exposed,
And destroyed that life I had proposed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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