Pashing a Roadmap of Gloom

[5:20 am]: I woke up with all my woes written boldly in my heart, I woke up with all the silence of yesteryears reigning in my body. My rosary is a strangled neck aiming to carry its burden with ease. The night before, a girl tried to carry my third leg with her tender arms, it’s the ritual here, for a girl to proffer pleasure to the boy she thought looks seductive, the music in it is played and the pants could only listen to its lyrics It’s hard to control the song, it’s hard, it’s hard, and I won’t survive any humiliation if the lyrics echo into her hands, I submerged my body into the darkness of the night

[5:5:30 am]: I’m still left strangling the sticks in my rosary, with repeated litanies making their way into my mouth, mother said life will be good, the craggy part of it will be shaved, and the rough skin shall be unskinned. I can feel the weight of each word in my heart, the drummer boy will lead us to the coast tonight.

I told my lover that a girl said my thick voice breaks into her marrows, and my lips depict the image of a staunch smoker, some said my voice gives joy, it depicts the colour of my motherland. Did you have anything I can use to treat this voice? “Do not be carried away by these comments, baby, I love all aspects of you” she said. Yes, she does, she does, I remembered nights I was metamorphosed into the banks of my dark thoughts, nights I’m blemished with my emotions, and she came like a wind to rescue my dangling legs, to me, love is another way of saying life is beautiful

my lover asked me how I’m doing with poetry. I said “it’s not a spontaneous flow, the more I keep my knees closer to it, the more it cups my emotions into an unwritten document, I want to try the ritual, to bathe, to suffocate beneath it but it seems the boat I’m in is built with emptiness. Isn’t the body designed to learn new things? This body is a calligraphy of wounded memories, a body surviving under multiples of water. She pressed further, why did you like dark poems? I don’t even know, but I don’t want to piggyback my ruins and my emptiness, I want to pour it forth to that empty paper, and I’m reading every book that recognizes a prisoner and a bitter jailer.

I eschew my body from things that question my existence. My room is a reminder of how my body struggle in the eyes of joy, though, my cologne filled this room, it holds my tears, the outsiders might spot naught in my body, and the forged smiles carry a thousand pain

I carry my mother’s hope, I carry my lover’s love, I sent confusion to exile, and I’m trying to say, these shimmering stars will not be dimmed.

Contributor’s Bio

Aderohunmu Abdulrokeeb is an undergraduate at the University of Ibadan and he’s from Ogun state, Nigeria. He’s working towards being the best of himself. He loves the presence of little children and hopes to become a philanthropist shortly. He’s an alumnus of the SprinNG writing fellowship. His works have been published in Kalahari Review, Kalonopia magazine, Commune writers, Voice lux journal, Roi Faineant, African writer magazine, and elsewhere. He tweets @Abonnylad.