Boomerang

of old, they used to say every grief is liable to get lost in the ensuing
expanse of time. what happens when a wound is becoming immune to
 
the hurrying hands of the clock? what happens when a grief is possessing
the attribute of a boomerang. i survived the night only to find myself hallucinating
 
about the dark. maybe the human body is designed to remember the roads that led to its ruin.
sometimes i toss a stone into the sky hoping it return as a flower; other times i
 
slept with my door open hoping that happiness disguised as a burglar. tell me, what is this thing
called healing      called wholeness      called reinvigoration? i have travelled
 
this far to understand that time doesn’t change the colour of a bruise.

what we see as a scar is often a smolder awaiting conflagration.

Shadows

Tonight, the moon will drape the sky but only as a prelude for a body that will walk into the
shadows of darkness.
 
Inside the shadow, a boy can be seen         wandering in the dark; searching for a place to call home.
growing up, my life was a chapel booming with the vocals of assorted choirs -a truckload of friends, walking down the terrain of life; hands enclasped, regardless of a rain, or a sunshine.
 
But here i am today, with no one to call mine; with no one to grace my cathedral.
Sometimes, when I look into the mirror, I see myself - a salvo-shattered boat, drifting down the ocean of life surrounded by a ripple of sighs.
 
Mother said i should bury all my sadness in a cemetery down the past.
But what she doesn’t know is this: a boy can erase all the memories in his life, but not the arrow that made a mark on his back.

 

Haruna Abdulmajid is a Nigerian poet and the author of the chapbook, THINGS I HAVE COME TO LEARN ABOUT SADNESS (PIN CHAPBOOK SERIES, 2020).