I Hold Onto Things your memory / dissolves tenderly / becomes / grief my mother breaks into a smile when she says / i have your eyes but what she really says is / in my eyes / i hold pain / like a baby gently / that this / grief / will break me but there are pieces of me in your photo album i hold on to lost things like / a broken vase / holding a wilted rose the way i held your hands & watched / as your breathing built a rhythm & i asked God to return the star in your eyes Grief Wants Your Body Like a Lover on a Cold Night i name it with a silence; my nightly tremor —bones worn out from shivering / eyes rupturing tonight / again / grief slips into my bed like a forbidden lover ________ i have watched a grave grow / into a garden / & I know how a breathless body becomes soil / holding roses & prayers / & memories ________ at my father’s funeral / the priest says God grieves with us / & I wonder if He burns His sleep / till His eyes become the inside of a wound / if He incises His wrist till He finds / a calmness / in his veins ________ every night / these wounds come to me like a child; in one wound / my father / smiles in a polaroid in another / his favorite song burns / on my tongue & in another / i walk / towards a coffin’s creak _________ my father’s memory grows like an ache & my tremor grows with it
About the Author:
Ebubechukwu Udeoba is an alumnus of the 2021 SprinNG Writing Fellowship and a 2023 Idembeka Creative Writing Workshop Fellow. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Kalahari Review, NSPP anthologies, Eboquills and elsewhere. He was a finalist for the Nigerian News Direct Poetry Prize 2020 and the second runner up for the NSPP 2021.
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