for Chidinma

 

Each time I remember home I remember you.
We met at a crossroad, the moon was sinking
but the promise of sunrise urged us into songs.
While others raised their voices and wailed,
I was dumb as a drum, which unless beaten
by the palms of men gave no utterance of sound.
Last night I saw you in my dream, Why,
you wore a mask, and it was my face.
I did not believe my ears when you called me
brother, but then you said the words again.
In the dream, both of us stood holding tight
unto our loudest questions like guns.
The bird inside your voice rouses the child
inside of me, inside of everyone, a tenderness
that lifts the nightfall out of my mouth.
There was something about you,
there was something about your footfalls
like a rain of feathers, overflowing into a song
so heavy it broke the streetlights dangling inside the moths.
Maybe the future can not save us;
maybe memory is what will save us—we must
sit again under the colloquial muse of moonlight,
remembering the future, remembering our laughters,
remembering our silences, remembering,
our hearts leaping towards the stars, bursting
into flowers too loud for the sky to contain;
reminiscing on the loneliness of the sky
so imprecise with hopes even the eyes can not touch.
And now that I have found you,
tell me, how can I ever learn again to leave you?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Photo by Kym MacKinnon on Unsplash