Mourning: dance of one
I dance in the puddles, barefoot
Going where the water lures me
My steps shatter the moon’s fragile reflection
Into shards of dying light.
In the mouth of this dark waters, home to broken things,
I let the rhythm of the ripples, rising in welcome, cleanse my fragmented soul
Maybe I can still be made whole.
In defiance of the laws impressed on this soil beneath me,
I levitate, glide
Through this void
Whatever I touch slips
Away
I’m surrounded by bodies
But there’s no warmth here
Come, come take me. It’s dark out here.
I hear the crickets and cradle their delicate song to my bosom
I’m a hoarder
Seeking to possess that which I cannot own
to feed this
hollowness I’ve learnt to nurture so well
The earth though, bless it
tells me it does not belong to me, that
Nothing belongs
To me
Voice weary and ancient, like it had done this over and over;
tender and patient too, as though explaining to a child,
how the day pours into night
And what was I, but a child?
Like a fool, delirious, desperate
I did not take heed, I
Held on, grasping, grasping
At the fluttering, slippery hem of its dance
Convinced this one thing could belong to me
that I could make it mine.
And would you know, everything I’ve loved,
I’ve loved dead
or dying;
Held in these arms
that have known, caressed
nothing but transient ruin and decay.
And so I demand from the wind, whose howl of woe inhabits my throat,
What is the metaphor for continuous, relentless grief?
Here I am,
A body
that has only existed, possessed
by mourning,
this body
all teeth and tongue and emptiness,
does not remember how to cradle
Something made of breath.
Water, with it’s consuming hunger and intense life, slithers
away, becomes graspless
in my desperate, yearning palms.
And oh, do I wonder what loving a thing swollen
with life would do to me, make of me.
Aishat Yahkub is a Nigerian creative, poet, bookworm, art lover and medical student. Her poems have been published in Brittle paper, Agbowó, visual verse and nightshade lit. Her works explore the fluidity of identity and portrayal of “home”, through her cast of outcasts. When she’s not reverentially appreciating exquisite poetry and art, she practices stillness and escapes into dreams.