Deadness sits on his wrist;
Thin slits of spilling redness; the life water
That crawl onto his palms
And falls from his fingers
But does not reach the earth
To form
That cataclysmic bond between
The life giver and the returner of life
She -the mother- scorns his death
Deadness sits on his throat
Face tightened in grief
As the mother’s child; life
Flees from his eyes
And deadness reaches into his mouth
To pull, forcefully, the breath from his lungs
But the mother rejects his deadness
And waves the breath into his throat
Until they are imprisoned in a loop of the returning and the not receiving
Deadness sits in his eyes
A prayer for release
The desperate plea for acceptance
From the mother
The one who imprisons him in the eyes of a desolate boy
For whom the kiss of life has lost its thrill
For whom a new lover; deadness
Waits
Take me home.
And alas the mother sees
The blues of his onyx black eyes
And the blues of his fine brown skin
And the ocean color of his forever tears
That spill from behind his ever dry eyes
And the blues of his hands clasped in prayer for a release
From the world where blue hides behind forced smiles and untrue laughs
And the mother is smothered in the grief of seeing and wishing not to see
So she says
As she allows his life waters to touch the earth of her skin,
As she holds the breath back from his lungs,
My womb has loved many a boys
But none of whom carry the ocean in their ever dry eyes
Or wear the blue of sadness like a funeral shroud; a self-eulogy
Or choose the death lover over my gift; life
But alas I have learnt
To love the boy for whom blue is not merely just a color.’
NB: The author discusses this poem in an interview published today in The Moveee. The interview is titled “Chidera Anikpe Asks His Mother About Death“.