On New Year’s Eve

Tonight, there is no music, 
just the nightingale and its voice.

I am girl & alive for the second
midnight wags its tail across the clock.
 
It doesn’t matter that 365 came running 
in a spree & I was all about catching 
my lost breath from the air that stole it.

I swear, the asylum comes undone 
each time 12 mid is exhausted. 

My hopes return to being flaked paint
& dust beneath a boy’s sandal. 

Where do I find the joy 
that scours all this soot from skin?

Where is the lightning 
that phosphoresces through a funeral pyre?

Again I am out in the cold
hands seeking honey & the bee’s sting.  

I dart towards the wide gates
of each new year with swollen feet.
I hang the lanyard of my anxieties

at the hallway & smear
the entrance with tears & alcohol.

How long do I keep finding
the end only to begin again. 
I did not run this far

for a fresh start.
At what point do we celebrate
the end of the world?

where midnight is forever
& my palms stay frozen

beneath a boy’s shirt.
At what point does daybreak
recline into its hideout for good

because we are all trapped in the dark,
in the midnight of a new year?

About the Author:

Iheoma J. Uzomba is the editor of The Muse no. 5o journal (a journal of creative and critical writing at the University of Nigeria Nsukka). She is a winner of the Lagos-London prize, a longlistee of the poetically-written prose contest and a fellow at The Undertow Program. Her poems have been published on Rattle, The Shore Poetry, Kissing Dynamite, The Rising Phoenix Review, Ake Review and elsewhere. Find her on YouTube where she puts up Spoken Word Poetry content @Iheoma Uzomba.

*Featured image by Steve Johnson on Unsplash