Bruises are measured with the pinch of a finger.
i crave your voice & a morgue came.
i have unearthed my heart for you
i search my ears for the last beep of your voice, your laugh.
this world is strange, but what's more strange is
how each passing moment drowns you in an elusive frenzy
of what could have worked.
i observed my feet, they ache.
ached from a journey i thought had ended.
& damning thought that what/who
you call home is only a steam in a kettle- it never stays
it leaps & distance keeps stretching itself
the first poem i wrote after you became a bird is that:
if you were a dove, you'd bear home on your back & return
but when the poem conjured an owl, i knew you had gripped
the night & night is a peevish hope-
it dribbles dawn even when it tries to flicker rays on dimples.
again, in my meditation, i saw a gale around a stream.
i was washing my weariness & i tried to hold you in my arms.
as i came nearer, you dissolved like a gust of glucose on the tongue.
i waited, stared at the nothingness you've become;
i prayed & prayed & prayed
& i went back to bathe my weariness a second time.
mum says, someday your wings will dust itself above my roof;
she exhorts that i feed my heart butter because
hope does get fat & when it is plump,
it morphs into faith. & yes, i have faith, but
i have never tried it on what's lost.
Ojo Olumide Emmanuel is a Nigerian Poet and Book Editor. He is the author of the Poetry Chapbook "How Flowers Pollinate Before the Arrival of Butterflies (Authorpaedia, 2022). He is the winner of the Nigerian Prize for Indigenous Language (Pidgin, 2025) and the WeNaija Literary Contest (Non-Fiction, 2023).