In the distance between the fruit
& the serpent, there was desire.
All I was was merely a bridge.
I knew God, not just as light,
but as the hollow from which
light proceeds. I knew Adam.
Once, we plucked a red thing
& called it Tulip. We’d sing
with the lyrebirds, then make
love on the meadow. When
he splayed my body open–
like groundwater– & reached
inward to drink from me, it was
the closest I came to playing
God. & we were content:
touching ourselves, naming
things, awaking day after day
to find the prohibited fruit, like
two wild dogs strapped to a meat.
But the one time I failed is all you
recall. Tell me, what am I in
the stories you learned: Greedy
or keen? Traitorous girl? Is there
even one account where I do not
chew the fruit without protest?
Eternity is hardly an accurate
measure of life. To live forever
is to die at once. But I wanted
the thrill of something more,
the way any bird, however fed,
looks towards the sky & wonders when.
Chiwenite Onyekwelu is a Nigerian poet. His poems live in Hudson Review, Cincinnati Review, Adroit Journal, Chestnut Review, and elsewhere. He won the 2024 Idumaese Alao Prize for Literature. He is also the winner of 2023 Hudson Review Frederick Morgan Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the Alpine Fellowship Prize. Chiwenite holds a Bachelor of Pharmacy (B.Pharm) from Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Nigeria. He’s on Twitter as @Chiwenite_O
Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash