A Weather of my own Making

by Nnadi Samuel

Art by Kerry Maire

I slave through frost in the feral likeness
of a snow-monger, ashore.
when I flatten my loin onto a glacier,
the ice toughens from the ground

a testament to the many ways
liquid shapeshifts into a floorboard,

 into what lays transparent:
glowworm, rummaging its underbelly.
the turmoil birthing a larva of light.

the night stinks of easy excitation,
as rain licks the sadness.

do I begrudge a weather of my own making?
I let hail throw more light on it.

that which we term ‘longing’ is life worn sideways,
to mirror us in past-perfect tense.
stampeding the thicket of language for utterance,
a four-footed rogue leak of damnation.

death is a delicate chore as it is ghastly.
your loin—overrun by weed, ending with soil.
throw my gaze past the lack of machete.

 rust beheads the moment.
midday, a rooster claws at a family tree.

I conclude, the finger is a way to wear loss,
smear my thumb where the hurt clusters.

beneath the brightness of wound,
a ligament comes undone,
light softens our reflection.
my thoughts ornament the past.

past, being less of previous events
& more of how to undress time,
as an orange is stripped of its peel,
even when sweetness is a memory it cannot reach.

 the longing calls me by name.
there are places I haven’t been, 
where I belong.
monsoon wind fogging the landscape.

 I imitate the mist,
till I’m one of what’s left for vanishing.
look, how gravity seems useless
in the face of harm.
I uplift, slow-paced as a budding storm,
yet I race past grace.
I raise the back of palm—
stamping my fist in places beauty leaves a watermark.

 

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