a portrait of your smile plays in my head,
your eyes sparkling with the light of a thousand suns
i close my eyes and you are here—the sharp jut of your forehead resting in my palm,
your nose, a fat letter M competing for space
i remember you a talking spirit. never still, never silent
always teasing, always jesting, making joke after joke like you were born to do it
i will not remember you a sad-broken-boy, begging for the mercy of death
i will not remember you with hell in your mind and death in your eyes
i will not speak of you on fire, longing for the coolness of the sea
i will remember you loud, like you always lived, a sea without borders—leaping, boundless
i will remember you giving yourself without respite, all or nothing
i will remember you shining, with all the lights of the stars
i remember you, a moving train, an unending song,
i remember you, in the quiet evening light,
your body ablaze with the flame of youth
your heart filled with the love of a million lifetimes
i remember you with fire
i remember you, K.
Olakitan Aladesuyi
I live in Lagos where I work as a software developer/data analyst by day and a writer at odd hours. My fiction and poetry have appeared in African writer, Kalahari review, Best New African Poets 2018 Anthology, Agbowó Art, Poetica Magazine, The Naked convos, As Equals Africa, Praxis magazine, Watershed Review, Prairie Schooner and is forthcoming in the Animal Heart Press Nigerian anthology.
Sometimes, I tweet here: @kitanbelles
This entry appeared in The Memory Issue
Photo by Fredrick Eankels from Pexels