Your sun cracks its body and wants to see you in.
Your moon knows the darkness of your sun’s plans
in your life. As a star boy, I decipher everything
conspiring against your ecstasy, dear beloved.

In one of my poems, I describe how my heart
breaks and dissolves into ice, and I ascertain some
connections between your predicament and mine.

Your parents’ wish to see you journey with a boat
to a matrimonial village is unbecoming of them.
My love, you are too vulnerable to hunger, and a plate
of pounded yam and egusi soup may not smile
for you in that lonely destination.

I pity the cadaver of misery you will become,
for that boat is made up of permeable timbers
that are easily subjected to dissolution by water.

I don’t want to see you drowning in shapeless water.
I detest to see water hugging your heavenly body.
And if you begin this journey, I am afraid
that you may get capsized at the bed of the river, and
if this happened, you would be no more.

I want you to be mine and mine alone. I will
never smile for weird waters to feast on the softness
of your smile.

I pray that Allah lets you not be taken away from my sight,
away for this journey, or drowned by rivers that know little
of your height and breadth.

I love you, yet your sun wants to darken my ways towards you,
and if this came to stay, expect from me not revenge,
not delight, & not forgiveness; expect from me a return;
I swear by God, I will suffocate your sun’s breath
in the first stanza of my next poem.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash