the valley between
whatever is holding the sun
has loosened its grip:
this blazing ball dangling over our
heads scourge us to our marrows—
heaven weeps; the droplet
is not rain, but misery.
the sky holds a timer,
foretelling a storm. i gathered
my pain into words &
christened it poetry, like
writing your worries by the sea—
awaiting the billows to erase them into
oblivion. tomorrow, i will wear a caftan
of bliss, & sit to taste air.
my tongue desire the taste of freedom.
daily, we fall by the seduction of the night,
& slumber, forgetting tomorrow
is another day to be human.
i have not been to heaven
or hell but i know what it is like
to dwell in the valley between;
ghost-silence, when you cry to the
universe for aid,
your knock tumbling back as echoes.
why do we love the familiar road?
this tale is of a fugitive who
at birth was given a bracelet
of fear woven into a labyrinth.
my body is no longer home
but a catalogue of misgivings.
i am a voyager with a backpack
of questions, hunting for clarity in
a cluttered heart. in bits, reality
disappears like woods in the jaw
of termites. i feel dislodged, like a
sleepwalker, or a pendulum swinging
in space. how do you breathe without
huffing fears that define you? how do
you rewind time to gather fragments
of yourself? i am searching for the
unknown, the priest named it god.
he said there are answers that can
unsettle life’s equilibrium. tell me,
why do we love the familiar road?
Damilola Omotoyinbo
Damilola Omotoyinbo believes in the power of the pen and the positive difference it can make in our world. She has work/interview published at Afritondo, Kalahari Review, Konya Shamsrumi, Praxis, Hack writers, The Nigerian Tribune Newspaper, nantygreens, and elsewhere. Damilola is an Alumni of the Transcendence Poetry Master-class founded by Aremu Adebisi, a fellow of the Ebedi International Writers’ Residency and a mentee of the SprinNG Writing Fellowship. She is Damilola Omotoyinbo on Facebook & Instagram, she blogs at damilolaomotoyinbo.wordpress.com
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