POETRY

Gideon Emmanuel 

                    CREDITS: PATRICK DOUGHER 

 

IR(RATIONAL)

Do you know what scares me about death the most?

It’s not about the already plotted graph of how we will

all elope into the azure, not about how we will like dew

first, dwell on earth before we leave without the earth.

It’s about.

_How the soil on which our soles peddled becomes a carpet 

for the soles of others when brown sands become our new clothes.

_How the lights that brighten our pathway in the dark become

the eyes that watch over us when our eyes no longer blink.

_How the giggles, smiles & florals of memories we once shared

become the shards of frolic scenes.

Take me to the altars, I hope to find God there, to burn incense to his

presence & plead for forgiveness. My parent’s death still haunts me 

like my old addictions, but I’ve learned that a body cannot be an

antagonist to its pains. Dear God, when you come to take your 

beloved, remember to pick us just the way my mother picks out shafts

from the wheat. The beatitude says that blessed are the meek for 

they shall inherit the earth I’ve tried to convince myself that truly the 

meek will inherit this earth where men are the baits they set for 

themselves. I must admit that death is a partial being I don’t mean

to be left out when my body shall grow wings but will there be a 

census to know those who will inherit heaven? I am sick of the 

fate that holds me captive about death. I am sick of the faith that’s 

attached to the threnody in my lips that someday I’ll be an affection 

forgotten by lovers after years of unrequited mourning mornings.

That I’ll be a loosed kite from a girl’s hands before she flies it.

                                              

Gideon Emmanuel (he/him) is a young poet and teacher from Lagos, Nigeria, who adores nature and children. He's the Winner of World Voices Magazine's June 2022 Poetry Contest.