Rituals

we light the candle: death does not
                        come when our garments are beautiful.

we pray:         holy ghost. break our garments
                        and fill their pieces with dirt.

our knees make love to the earth,
our forehead is
the difference between what fire
we wear, and which we want to dispose,
or prune.

in Jesus name: if death is a revisitation of sweetness
                        Lord, pray, we want to wear it under our skin.

Silence

grief is the junks the mad man worships.
and fire. like Jahannomo, or Seriir
or the beautiful kisses-into-ash of a beautiful mansion.
plus my mother’s map of tears drilled
on father’s grave.
grief is what cloth we wear for ourselves
because we have never learnt how to hide our skin
or peel them to sweetness.

i want to die, because dying is one
way to perform these rituals of burning grief
& perhaps I might meet my father and ask
him why he turned us into glasses
of broken tears.

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Poem © Shitta Faruq Ademola
Image by Reijo Telaranta from Pixabay (modified)