(after Derek Walcott’s ‘Love After Love’)
I sometimes walk with Halima to a building where her pelvis is a bow
and her legs draw whirlwind-circles on the roofing.
I point out how badly her track suit needs stitching
she smiles, pretends not to hear
like when she prays
and her words come differently,
whispering to her beads at sunrise
then counting off,
on her fingers, reciting from her ‘Resolutions List’.
Insha Allah….
She would not face Mecca
her cheating lover was there, at Jamarat
instead, she says, mould your faith into a mackerel,
let it set sail, deep into little waters,
re-make faith from minuscule details
and that’s to say,
send what remains of your heart, like scaffolding to the heavens
shrapnel after shrapnel, slowly-
mating snails don’t hasten.
He thinks you’re a tumor, you send painful
spams down his testicles,
he calls you cancer, painful from over-growth, but
you build your faith from him, from those.
A groan. A sigh. A twitch of eyelids.
A wave of the hand.
Make music with the strings on his tongue.
When they cluck at you, recite a line (or two) from Beethoven
or Johnny Cash, when you have too much black.
You are a sunflower bursting buds.
You have agency, too.
A wellspring, well-hidden from sight.
Chisom Okafor is a poet, Nutritionist and Dietitian, who was shortlisted for the Brittle Paper Award for Poetry in 2018 and the Gerald Kraak Prize of 2019. His works have been published or are forthcoming in Praire Schooner, the Indian Journal of Literature and Aesthetics, Rattle, Frontier Poetry, Palette Poetry, The 2019 Gerald Kraak Anthology (The Heart of the Matter), Kikwetu, The Rising Phoenix Review, The Single Story Foundation Journal, Sentinel Literary Quarterly, adda, Ghost City Review, Jacar One and elsewhere. He presently works as Chapbook editor for Libretto Magazine.
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