Nostalgia

Ibadan’s mirrored faces, a digital tide,

Unleash a deluge where memories reside.

Backwards I’m swept, to yesterday’s embrace,

Yet tethered here, in this present-day space.

Nostalgia’s echo, a whisper of fear.  

Each city cries its own story. 

This one, a meerkat’s wary call. 

Mind divided: past shadows, 

future’s gleam. 

Caught in the current, a time-woven snare,

I drift between then, and the now that I bear.

But with a struggle, a twist and a sigh,

I slip from the grasp of what used to be I.

So-fa-r-grief

Memory is like touching the tip of your finger to your tongue, much like how careful traders meticulously count stacks of cash. In this case, I find myself counting “ifs.” I often blame fate and time for the current reality, assuming that things would be positively different if you were still here.

Limited things

For S:

Loss is freedom

Perhaps, loss is freedom

I am not like them

I have often experienced strange feelings washed ashore. Those that promise to linger until dusk, but vanish with the twilight’s kiss.

Grief has taught me to be resilient against fleeting excitements, both in action and thought. I have learned that nothing lasts beyond surface appearances—except for death.

Nothing rooted in the earth can reach the sky, not even the mightiest peaks. Only being rooted in water ensures safety from drowning.

Those flowing fountains remind us that water in the end claims us all. Those who grasp everything risk losing their grip on what truly matters.

I am not like them who still see the beauty of the world as endless. Who cherish it beyond the gift of air – breathliness.

I am not like them who walk the earth forgetting the efforts of insects and the tears left in grains crushed out of weathered rocks.

I am not like them who repose faith in the evolutionary flesh but struggle to contemplate the permanence of darkness beyond the grasps of lights.

I am not like those who left the dead to cope with inaction – alone. I walk by every time offering minded presence for the debt of love that will last beyond breath.

I am not like those who randomly love, randomly hate and find it hard to lose the sense of self for the sake of that which was professed to be loved.

I am not like those who live the moment in virtual reality forgetting that the sun shines permanently as the moon glows conconcurrently beyond what the eyes can attest.

Challenge 3

Wandering in search of

what flies, what bites and

what draws out life

while it lodges millions of

other microscopic lives

through time immemorial.

Tagged as

an agent of Malaria.

Primed as human bait for

the discovery of

human escape from it

How long, to shed grief?

Nothing tastes funnier than grief.

How you smile in your thoughts, but a little less on your face, and completely lose it between your lips – that’s how the world expects you to survive constant hurts that never go away. The world draws breath from rolling winds, so it never stops bleeding. This is the world that asks the odd question, “Why do you live if you find living unsavoury?” You come to realize that nothing tastes funnier than grief; nothing sticks harder than the bitterness on your tongue upon the accumulated loss of the opportunity to wholeheartedly call them by their names; nothing feels permanently defeating than the inaccessible presence, except the strong whiff of how sweet they would have smelled if alive. Their unseen smiles dance in your mind, as they have become ghosts on your lips that hold unspoken sighs. The world breathes – winds, but your lungs feel as if all they do is bleed – trauma unseen, and exhale grief, a bitter laugh, and counterclockwise dreams that linger in between

2-full years

In memorial of ‘R Jan 6th. A new year begins but a new cycle of heaves and sighs persists. My head has become a mounted chariot, struggling each day to pull away the baggage of grief from my mind. It has been 2-full years of silent dreams, of pretentious smiles, of hopping over puddles of reminiscing about your beautiful memories of your existence and the sad reality of your loss. It still feels like yesterday, that fate took its last turn on you forcefully. Your pictures have transformed from shocking disbelief to a form of solace that helps me cope with the question of my unpaired state of being. The past three days have nearly drained me of life. Every year the well swells higher with too many reasons that make detachment difficult- from the grief. Grief comes in sealed packages of silent pains. Like exercise does to the muscle, the heart grows to accommodate grief but never completely healed from it. I take solacé in dreams of other planets I have always found you apart from earth. To grief is to remain loyal in love because nothing else makes life easier- in their absence.