again, i unfasten a star from the grasp
of the cloud & it dissolves into another
night where i am a dark cloud begging
to cascade like a waterfall but i don’t
because i am not as heavy as the waters
above me every dead i have buried
i am a river refracting light towards the
sky & in a flash, i am a rainbow with
colours of grief a curve, bent into the
shoreline of sunrise now remind me
what it means to be at the border of light
a place my body can only call exile
because when i draw memories
from my eyes, my iris becomes a lit
candle dwindling in the wind
remind again what it means to walk
into light & not carry pyrophobia
beneath your feet as friction
& not feel fire & not feel the impulse
to dance where dancing is a euphemism
for ache in my eyes, there’s a mirror
that inverts beauty say, at the end of
this tunnel, there’s a cave begging to
swallow me & its threshold is a gun,
its breath, a bullet straying towards me
& on the wall, there’s a shadow of a boy
searching for his shadow
Chinedu Gospel, frontier IV, is a young Nigerian Poet. He writes from Anambra. And he’s the moderator of spoken word poetry for Threposs: a reel of poetry. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in The Rising Phoenix Review, LUNARIS Review, Rough Cut Press, Eremite poetry, Feral poetry, Poetry column NND, Eunoia review, Midway journal, Rigorous magazine among others. He enjoys listening to music or reading poems when in his leisure. Say hi on twitter @gonspoetry & on IG @gospelsofpoetry
Illustration by C.B. Auder.
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