“a beginning is a delicate time.” – Dune. & I am at a cemetery under a sky dead as the ground, tucking the ripped daises from my heart into a hole. I know there are so many doors we open that greet us with a cold knife. there are many times a nail returns in our hands after a shake. sometimes, we’re the birds dying to grow wings, only to fly into a window. other times, we’re the clock hands bothering ourselves over & over to find something real, not knowing we’re screwed. this is not me saying: the blade is too sharp, you’d think it was made for my skin. or my room is too cold, I need someone to sleep into–maybe. the truth is: every time, I stand at the porch to paint the blue sky on my canvas, it fades into gray. in dreams, I see myself smiling in framed photographs, but I awaken to blank walls. how hot should the water be for my custard to come out thick? I’ve tried & tried, my kettle’s blackness speaks for itself. God, why am I the lily in the land of lonely? an owl pulls me out of my mind’s abyss with its sound. & I walk away feeling somewhat renewed. but I know, that a new page is also a page yet torn. or am I wrong?
About the author:
Praise Osawaru (he/him) is a writer of Bini descent. A Best of the Net, Pushcart Prize, and Nina Riggs Poetry Award nominee; his work appears in Agbowó, FIYAH, Frontier Poetry, Down River Road, The Maine Review, and Uncanny Magazine, among others. He is the first-place winner of the 2021 Valiant Scribe Poetry Prize, the second-place winner of the Nigerian NewsDirect Poetry Prize 2020, and a finalist for the 2021 Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize & the 2021 Dan Veach Prize For Younger poets. He is a Contributing Editor for Barren Magazine and a reader for Chestnut Review. Find him on Instagram & Twitter @wordsmithpraise.
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