I Now Bleach – Adedokun Ibrahim Anwar.
I Now Bleach It is in your loss I mastered the alphabets of silence, & this one here bleaches me into memories and memories and, memories, pardon, I lose count every time I get emotional. This memory is almost silent, but, I hear it, sometimes ago I learned photos to be the fastest way to run backwards into time, I learned them/ to be louder than voices in fact/silence. There are moments I turn to God without mentioning your name, forgive me – I do not mean to do this. It’s silent here, my heartbeat matches the defibrillator in your ward last week. Here you are the memory every instant summons, and I the body that bleaches into you. The silence here transforms me into everything. I keep your photos for days like today, this time I will not forget to say your name before God. This time, I get…
Sickling Through for Soul Balms – Chinemerem Prince Nwankwo.
Sickling Through for Soul Balms & in the morning,we slid like ornaments glittering with oversized adjectivesin the follicles of our father’s praise.We warmed our teeth in tinted happiness, wellingup as butterflies fluttering in the country of father’s body.We’re a host of glow-wormsin which our father’s grief diminishes ingreen light. Day by day, we sneak intothe taste buds of our father’s rattling prayers,spurning spicules of reminisces fruiting in us, fears.Admit grief, father is a balcony of abstract gardens,where love blooms like soft petals of homestead flowers.& his humor, streaming like fine wines in which our trifling tempests ferments.O, how sweet to find fragility cradling in the chaotic arms of fatherhood,leaving us wrapped in the foliage of succor.Holding forte, we prune this wild, sickling through —not for acinus or vesicles but for soul balm. Contributor’s Bio Chinemerem Prince Nwankwo is currently an undergraduate of History and International Studies, University of Uyo, Uyo,…
Lifestyle – Blessing Omeiza Ojo.
Lifestyle How wicked a space is to a body is notable in the way a bird puts a stop to its song of hope, while I am still drawing strength from its lyrics, while in the wood. I have been here on most days of my life, a place I share with lonely little things. There is an earthworm burrowing into the earth and I am reminded how grief screws into my body. In another interpretation, I am searching for a space to call home. The earth is not running perhaps because it has no home elsewhere. Tell me where is large enough to welcome its vastness, its history of motherhood, the forlorn creatures hidden beneath its wings? In the way it orbits the sun, I think it pleases the earth to relocate. Little me welcomes little things. Isn’t this the way of life: the pelting of plagues like algae…