In my Demand to happen as a Garden
by Nnadi Samuel
how does mist quantify loneliness?
on no occasion has it been the cloud to end a day without company:
the way at harm’s length, a relative slips from my grip.
I am deathless with bold conviction that:
a funeral is worth tears, if the mourning is good.
but, what becomes of this body—fed so well, it outgrows its wooden sentence?
raise a hand, & the aquarium here breeds a school of threat.
mealworms, solving into tertiary fat in the jaw of whales,
as fallen clay resumes sketching its dull report on bright waters—
untranslated in its gushing away.
I make into a spyglass,
eye the sun & it returns the favour with blindness.
lightning french kiss themselves like it was consensual.
I soak in the brightness till I come of age.
the past measures my journey by how much dust I’ve raised.
tell me, what is it about the moon that slumps in my porch yard
& feed the walls with excess lime.
at a glance, darkness outsprints my reflection,
runs out of steam—lacing & relacing its foamy black breath from spilling.
disaster keeps barreling through me to assume its rightful place as a hanging blessing.
decades back, a backbreaking darkness bends the light
that finds Ma in low-waist silk, rinsing a dead lyric.
lotus, tumbleweeding from the throat of a finely cut cloud—
in the way I recall,
in the way it must have played.
I stare hard into this event & the detail blurs out.
in my somnambulation, I drag past rubber trees—enough to last a plastic surgery.
even the wind lays in elastic silence & comes off as spring.
perhaps, my joy is fair weather.
someday, I wish to be remembered as a stray.
yet, the unmowed lawn calls me useful.
who else trims its unruly haircut that badly?
a rake, when lifted, is a joystick to a never-do-well.
I lift my spirit as a grass would from its root,
rag my loin aimlessly across the darkness.
I demand to happen as a garden.
here am I, earth-stuck as catchweed.
my life is a cancerous darkness, headed for nowhere.
what can I salvage?
in the next one, I want to be the light that refuses to dim:
all of that round soft luminance, roaming the surface of earth.
“I want to be the light that refuses to dim” (Imóle - meaning light) - Mohbad
ABOUT THE CREATOR
Nnadi Samuel holds a B.A in English & literature from the University of Benin. Author of Nature Knows a Little About Slave Trade selected by Tate N. Oquendo (Sundress Publication, 2023). Nnadi's works have been previously published/forthcoming in Foglifter, Beestung Magazine, ALOCASIA, Fifth Wheel Press, Common Wealth Writers, & elsewhere. A 3x Best of the Net and 7x Pushcart Nominee. Winner of the Penrose Poetry Prize 2021 (LGBTQA+), 2022 Angela C Mankiewicz Poetry Contest, River Heron Editor’s Prize 2022, Bronze prize for the Creative Future Writer’s Award 2022, UK London, and recently the Virginia Tech Center for Refugee, Migrants & Displacement Studies Annual Award, 2023. On Twitter @Samuelsamba10.