By Olabisi Abiodun Akinwale:
Butterflies- Day 15
Love & Prayers
~It begins with love, I tell you, even prayers. -Romeo Oriogun.
& I’ve prayed for many things with loopholes in my heart/// for my country where a flower is just another body withering into itself/// for the child making shelters out of nothing/// whose eye is a poem covered in dried leaves/// for cities within the breast of dusk where sunflowers do not bloom/// for my sisters & the fortitude to float on water/// for places where blood is the shadow of voyages/// for the girl stuck in a mirror in love’s name/// for stories too frail to make it to sunrise/// for birds looking for song in tree branches/// in trees owning lonely rooms/// for a familiar moonlight to the night in my body/// for the rain hidden in numb skies/// I mean I’ve prayed even for what is seeking a way to break me/// like my country/// like places where blood is the shadow of voyages/// but when I open my mouth before you & speak of the graveyard lurking my lips/// of the darkness before my voice/// & of the fierce fear jolting in my joint/// it feels like emptying gloom in a river/// like a broken star gasping towards dayspring/// I tell you/// the lord’s prayer becomes a white convo with you/// so tonight/// I’ll raise you in a prayer/// & let the heavens hold your name as a way back to the beginning of answers/// I’ll ask that your voice be a map for chaos to find music/// baby/// & when I say I love you/// before those words is a prayer point dancing to awakening/// a prayer point where the silence sleeping between our rib is God dissolving two in one.
© Olabisi Abiodun Akinwale
Undiluted Poet
#undilutedpoetry