YOU RESURRECTED
i
You are a leftover of your father’s strength
buried in your mother’s bedroom
wall- after 6AM
you are messiah.
ii
First, you of teary joys
dancing down faces
next scene, you become
skin tanned by this hell
but they have taught you to ketch up
grief with simple shades of smile
as garland around your chest wall
grin gallantly down this hall.
iii
You took your first lessons on her lap
she taught you to trust your
toy cars to fly.
Your lips to say,
‘‘Our Lord’s prayer’’
little sweet prayers, you thought
you were a boy who need not ask much.
iv
You had too much,
she was your first love.
Life’s sweet.
Your cheek, dovely
you smile, the sun grows shy
happiness helped you cry.
v
You are a soft-sweet-sunflower,
but the world is full of
thorns and too impatient to watch
flowers bloom.
Too much that your petals
shrivel in gloom
so much of the world withering
wild in one room.
vi
Now, your sun tastes sour.
You sit somewhere in the middle
of your being,
a debate,
gathering thoughts
of your fluid mothers’ lips
saying- ‘son, learn to trust’
Now, that was her first true lie.
Because you watched her die
her breath, blanching like dye.
vii
You pray too much
telling God all what
he already knows.
Maybe he got bored too,
listening to your mother
bang on heaven’s roof
blood dripping from her neck;
a sacrifice, souvenir from
your feral father.
viii
You are torn tulip,
and your nectar
runs into places
your pain is solidified,
and again your wretch is redefined.
ix
You have become too
much of everything,
you want too much
you loose too much
you feel too much
and hope too much.
x
Now you think of the
innocence your name held
before birth,
the calm that nursed you to
cot at three,
like the soft wind caresses the
palm of trees.
The first gift that emptied
your soul into a young child-
learning language
learning love
learning laughter.
xi
With life still in your gut,
somehow, you realize you could
have died in there
but you choose to betray you-
messiah, you couldn’t douse your pain
in the pool of your father’s worries
you resurrected.
xii
Again, the world
turns their back at you
a spree of mocking teeth
hate meted out by friends,
the world knocks you out, and
at the door of your life you perch
begging to breathe again,
there’s too much dying in here.
Adaora Chinedu goes by the pen name Zephyr, a free-spirited writer, book addict, lover, salt, survivor. She scribbles anything ‘scribblable’; bridging the gap between poetry and prose. She thinks beauty and broken as near-synonyms. Loves fried plantains, black boots, and hates junk food (mostly puff-puff). She writes from anywhere.