CORRESPONDENCE TO SELF

O, Love. my innards brim
with napalm      & they’re just happy to
          have a first son.

write me back if you also bear
sadness      jewelled to a molar.
          you, half-smiling boy,

cannot let them see your grief      sparkle,
will not let it roll down
          to your father’s feet.

i know you.      brown boy.
perfect masquerade.      draping the blades
          paring away your skin.

you      fleshless shadow. you
          coffin-breath anthem.

a whole forest wilting      within you.
          your chest, a fossil of chest.

inside your mouth,      a burning church.
inside the church, a tongue
          praying.

———–

GRAVITY

weightlessness is a thing of flair. it is a certain
elegance to be as light      as a shadow.

but this is not a prayer to be clad in the mass of
wind, or fleshed with the skin      of a thought.

for i was once the texture of moonlight, my bones
tender like a honeyed limb.

i already learnt the magic of      disappearing
without waving around my slender arms—

          my tongue; the wand, each sentence;

a spell that unfleshes me, renders me an anatomy
of phantom—ghost boy with mist for voice.

picture this:

when i am a bluebird
               wiping its beak
clean on a leaf, the focus is on the leaf.

when i weave into a winter coat, they ask
               if i cannot be fire.

this is how a boy is neither enough for
desire or thirst, to be a meal which the
throat won’t feel its passing,      instead,

gliding / gently / like a gulp of air.

but i look back & find myself re-learning
gravity; my body, slowly re-moulding into
          a thing that bleeds.

to practice, i chorus my first name
& it answers me with      a quiet kiss.

look, i am showing mother my hands
& she doesn’t see                an ocean.
———–
Poem © Samuel Adeyemi
Image by Marek Studzinski from Pixabay