I
Your fingers traipsing
across my face taste like cigarettes
Smells I use to hate taste so lovely when they tickle my nostrils winking slyly as they curl
about the stray strand of hair
I call moustache at the corner of my lip –
Just here
You blow and this room that inhabits you and I
that we pretend to inhabit begins to fill with
foul things that fly, that glide without beauty
little cumulus of pale clouds that jiggle
Wisps possessed by a slowness that scatters
into tatters as my palm beats the air
for breath for my face
This will not happen again,
you said that last time
I concurred
Your left nipple did not…
…and I with no pretence to a conscience
or illness
took your almost pink erectness
as pill
And I stroked
and stroked
and tweaked you as with a pick…
and you fell
you fell vibrating still,
thrashing
about my finger…
…again.
II
In afterglow
you light up another
The tip of my nostrils
to breath places its head on my window-net,
eyes watering
That smell
That smell
You call me a synonym for butt
and laugh something hoarse and lonely wrapped in a foil of whispers ‘
as the generators begin their chorus
The cigarette suffers its throes
in screams that gleam embers
Like that cigarette
I cannot refuse my butt
between your lips: damp,
damn,…
…damp, I melt, I forget
and then burn,
again.
Nduka Akpe lives in Lagos and is known as Daddy G. O. in certain street circles. His interests are varied and include surviving. He is male and tweets @nduxsir. He intends to enjoy life, join him.