AKPATA MAGAZINE

verb
/me.læn.glu:m.fɔːl/

Definition:
— to keep sinking in melancholia & gloom every moment with little or no hope of bloom.

Example:
— this poet and poem melanglumfall at the end of each line.
a friend sends me a poetry book to ease my pains,
but the back and forths between the book & dictionary
irks me. perhaps, i’d have to write my own poetry book
& dictionary to find words sturdy enough
to bear the weight of my thoughts.
say grief hangs overhead, like a creaky ceiling fan
warbling a dirge as moments flicker into history.

forget alliteration, grief is gravity,
pinning down anything colourful reaching for the skies.

grief is white & black, perched gently
on my bedside stool like frangible memories
held together with strained arteries. it holds a smiling face,
faraway eyes that moaned desires for greener pastures and bluer skies.

grief is the sudden transition that your tongue struggles
to adapt to: changing ‘is’ to ‘was’ while referring
to your heartbeat, the one whom i suckled life from.

grief is the unsaid that glide down my throat
from tongue to trembling fingers and yet fail to
trickle out on paper. perhaps, a word exists not
to hold this pain. perhaps, i should create my own word.

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4 Comments

  1. This is amazing and very relatable. So hauntingly endearing, as the emotions are palpable on the page. I will return to this every now and then.

  2. The Poet Himself! I felt the word, the word is felt, and a lesson is learnt — henceforth, I will create lexical items to describe that feeling.

    Thank you, Poet.

  3. Greaaaaat. So inspiring 👏👍✨. ‘… perhaps I should create my own word’ U should do create u’re own word… This is wonderful. ‘…Grief is gravity’ and thus relatable 👏👏✨✨😁

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