You know the pain you have to go through
to be a bird flirting one window after another
Being in flight when your spine is that of a human
and your heart beat is that of a sparrow
hijacked by an unknown gravity is the kindest way
To survive on a pop lyric on top of an African rhythm
you know the rarest thing to do is how to survive
the streamlined excuses of every wind
that pauses on your head and makes its way
into your rickety feathers . . .
Cos you know you’re half human and half a bird.
And you know you can’t help but keep holding onto
A morsel of faith and puff of believe that someday
You would either be a full-flight bird
or a full-grown human who deserves a camera
and a shout of snapshots that reveals your all
But you know you can’t survive everything
not even when you know you’re a breathe that enlivens clay
So on surviving life and fire
burn every watershed that makes you watery
and dampen every light that turns you into a smoke
cos in so doing, you learn to know that
Just as life is life; so is fire fire….
Abeiku Arhin Tsiwah is a Ghanaian Technology and Smartphone Habitué. He’s the Senior Poetry Editor at Lunaris Review (a Journal of Arts & the Literary, Nigeria). His works have appeared in Afridiaspora, Peeking Cat Poetry, Expound, Novel Masters, African Writer, Agbówó, Liberian Literary Magazine, Face2FaceAfrica & —elsewhere.
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