A Home for Absence 

If only I could grasp the giggling,
press it between the flipping pages
of time like a fragile petal, soft, mellow
& fleeting, conveyed by the wind.

But joy, joy is a trickster. It is a travelling
minstrel, evanescent in form, moving
briefly on the stage of the body before
grief takes its course & enwraps itself
with the heavy skin of sorrow.

An absence builds itself a home within
my rib cage, like a ghost settling into 
the marrow of longing. & we wander back to
the altar of suffering, to the wilderness
of want, where laughter is just a way of
reminding the mind of broken expectations.

Wasn't it Sunday Adelaja who said,
To live is to die. To die is to live?
My heart hovers around this paradox
of being, so I live to remember,
& I remember, to breathe.



Floodwater

All my life, I've known love as a flood, 
as water washing away 
wreckage. Tonight, my past unravels:
a boy pouring 
his heart into love texts to his new crush
at the university.
I reckon this is how it began— this is where 
the heart was split
open to unpack roses. I swear, every heart
I've watered has 
blossomed into a garden, tender as the
touch that nurtures it.

They said there's a light at the end of 
the tunnel, but 
at the end, there was my father, there was him 
moving to greener pastures.
How this relocation became a fence between
the territories
of two lovers. His departure, exact as a bullet.
Exact as a scalpel,
cutting through flesh. The flesh absorbing 
its severity. 
Every cut, a way to become whole. 
And the body, 
halved planned. Yet, the body won't forget 
the necrosis, 
the place where all love began.



Reliving the past 

Nothing. 
Then, in a flash, the matchbox 
sprang to life, pushing darkness 
into dissipation. And this is how
life fleets into fragments of memory.
Daily, the heart beats afresh, sometimes 
filling you with hope, sometimes 
telling you the world hopes to archive
your name. Tomorrow, a life is cut short. 
Such an oxymoron, preserving the world 
in its hand(s). I must say,  I've lost 
so many to the jaws of death—
I've forgotten the names of many 
whose flesh has fed the earth. 
But memory is a feathery wing 
carried by pain into the present.
I still recall my father lying in the
hospital bed, gasping for air
through his nostrils, 
pouring some sweet, bitter words 
into my ears before silence swallowed his breath.

About the author:

Ferdinand Emmanuel Somtochukwu, Swan XXI, is a young emerging Nigerian poet and essayist. His works have been featured in Wingless Dreamer, Eboquills Magazine, Brittle Paper, Arts Longue, D’ LitReview, Poetry Column, Spillwords, Afrocritik, and others. He is currently studying English Language at Lagos State University. You can connect with him on X @EmmanuelSomto17.

Feature image by Erone Stuff on Unsplash