Michael Imossan

Finding my Way Out of You

Today opens in my therapist’s office. 
                           For sleep, drink 2 cups of lyric-less music.

She says to write everything I am thinking of.
                           Peanut butter, cupcake, snowflakes, pomegranate, peaches, vinegar.

This is the part I do not tell her: all the words taste like you.
                           Night: I turn on the music. Quiet strings running through my bones.

Meanwhile, a song is just a song until you open its windows.
                                                     
                            I jump inside, trying to  find my way out of you. 

​
I Do Not Know What Part of You Dances In My Throat 

I am back to where it all started.
Back to Sokoto, to the harmattan's frigid air sloshing  
Over [our] my lips like a left-over kiss. 
Back to the house—where the cracks on the walls
Question my loneliness. Inside the toilet, a used 
Condom is still bloated and filled. Surprised how [we] I forgot 
To flush. Whose duty was it to wash down the evidence of our sin?
I do not know—but I swear, when we kissed, we loved
It so much we forgot our tongues in each other’s mouth. 
Meaning, I do not know what part of you dances  inside my throat. 
I jump over cobwebs to reach the place where memory sleeps.
Inside my wardrobe, a pink lingerie is still waiting for your return. 
I pull out my tiny box of trinkets and the first thing I see is 
Your smile beaming through a grizzled passport. For a second,  
I allow myself drink the sunlight from your diastema. I think the 
house is beginning to understand. I can feel it caving in. 
[Insert name], it is a cold world out there.
still, I am burning the ash-colored cardigan you bought me. 
I am burning the blankets you left over that night before turning water.
I am burning the pink lingerie. I am burning your passports. 
I am saying Oh lord! Let us not wait for that which will not return.
I am saying Oh lord! Let that which left us remain in the leaving.
I can feel the house staring at me. I turn to stare back at it. In the end,
                           u       s
we both     b         r       t    into tears.

Michael Imossan is a Nigerian poet and the author of the award winning chapbook For the Love of Country and Memory (NigerianNewsDirect).​