Gurl    
for Ayofe, Grace and Ayosojumi

one day, we'll walk with no pebble of fear
stuck in between our soles and no hole in the ground 

will find any of their synonyms in our hearts. the sky 
will hang many of its colours on our faces & we'll 

wear them. we'll purr—we'll strut and sashay and still be 
a breathing bright flag of everything a man should carry. 

one day, we'll swim into each other's eyes
and find freedom in scattered scars & dried tracks of tears.

we'll dance, sing, and scream where the sun 
is more known more for dawn than dusk, where 

we can dissolve into our truths 
without diluting any shades of the hues we ooze, &

where every footstep we make, morphs 
into affirmations and pieces of confetti and

images of what anything divine should define. 
everything that escapes from our lips 

will be far from stifles, and whispers will be 
an extinct accent in the languages we know. 

we'll etch our joy in the lushness 
of several zephyrs, leave them to linger 

in the acrid smell of ìyeyè and still meet them, thick
like the smoke wafting from a known suya stand. 

gurl, these four stained walls will be more than 
hanging glow-in-the-dark stars. 

here, we'll be the pictures and the frames.
our minds and memories and bodies and bones will reach

resonance and in between each trough and crest, we'll sow sweet melodies loud enough to house a song & light enough 

to carry on our lips. one day, my friends, one day, we'll laugh at our heartbreaks, and retreat into raw joy. these tiny kisses, 

the shared smiles, this heat & everything that burns between us 
will be a remedy, will be that thing, with feathers.

About the author:

Taiwo Hassan is a writer of Yorùbá descent, a poet and a vocalist. A 2x Best Of The Net Nominee, his poems have appeared in trampset, Kissing Dynamite, Lucent Dreaming, The Shore, Brittle Paper, Dust Poetry Magazine, Ice Floe Press, Wizards In Space and several other places. He’s also an undergraduate student of Demography and Social Statistics at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ilé-Ifẹ̀, Osun State, Nigeria. His first chapbook, Birds Don’t Fly For Pleasure is published by River Glass Books.

*Feature image by Jason Leung on Unsplash