The Wolf Howls for Her Death Mission -Enit’ayanfe Ayosojumi Akinsanya.

The Wolf Howls for Her Death Mission

hearth

i’m stuck where indigo shadows play & the light is terse & half glimpses dance like prints of a dark blue moon

or like leaves leaving a lonely sky when branches are too weak to carry the stories of night

                         sway, sway

i don’t know when i will become it, but i feel it

earth

i listen to the doors closing

          o  p  e  n  i  n  g     

                           speaking

the rain is sand on my soul

                           bury, bury

if these bones & stones do not smother me, then i can catch you in her bed, in her deep

i can clutch winds of new

watch altered longings leap to flame in me—feral

i am the wolf that will howl her death mission

that will hear the gong of wisdom somewhere in the thick of these moon-deadened leaves

that will say:

                      don’t.

quiet!

wisdom self-destructed the hour betrayal struck

your promises stink like a cemetery of ground fish

all the years my gills were sucked like oranges are now buried on the blade of a shiny new knife

& blood is a beautiful colour 

if your throat paints it well—

when you see me march into the fires

do not—& I pray this at your fifth feet—

do not invent hope to tame these claws

Contributor’s Bio

Enit’ayanfe Ayosojumi Akinsanya was born in Ijebu-Ife, Nigeria. He is the first-place winner of the 2022 Arts Lounge Intercontinental Literary Award for Non-fiction, first-place winner of the 2022 International Itanile Story Award, a finalist for the 2018 National GTB Dusty Manuscript New Novelist Award, and a major finalist for the 2023 Afritondo Short Story Prize. In 2021, he was selected as one of Brittle Paper’s Best Nigerian Writers for his story, Palindrome. His works have appeared in Isele, Kalahari Review, Brittle Paper, The Shallow Tales Review, African Writer, Eunoia Review, and many more. He is twenty-eight years old and lives in Ogun State, Nigeria.