Cover Image: Faith NK
Waterbody
i am too easy. *soft enough to offer life. soft enough to lose it. to watch it meander away. like so many other things, this body has failed me. over & over again, it seems to tell the world that it can take everything. but yet it cannot hold them. they slip away. love, a bouquet of memories, the dreams, this chaotic hope, this longing. they drown. & the only purpose left of them to serve is their wreckage.
i cannot tame this body. though the loopholes i carry are gracious. they make me feel light. like a bag emptied of water. & they make me feel much fear. that what comes out of me may kill me. the more i live, the more the water i am. & i run abrim. i spill over. i spread wild. too tough to offer life. too tough to lose it. i am too helpless.
*a line from Rupi Kaur’s “i am water”
Naked
I speak so much silence
And the stench of my loneliness
Has sown a rainstorm of emptiness.
My body is a mirror showing the other side of life.
The reflection is a pack of pieces;
Which makes me have no answers
To give to many questions. Because
What is life that it is hidden in the fragility of body?
Perhaps, solace only exists in reclusion.
And what more harm can be done to a body
Than making it grow with the thorns of the world?
What more harm can be done to a body
Than making it drown in the sea of people?
But, they say that loneliness leaves one bare;
That it strips one off to the bone
And makes what is left a carcass of memories.
I can’t still find answers.
I think running away from life does not mean death;
It means keeping it.
Olusoji Obebe is a Nigerian poet and artist. He is the Winner of the Fidelis Okoro Prize for Poetry 2024 and a poetry reader at Fiery Scribe Review. On X, he tweets (actually more of retweeting) as @olusoji_obebe.
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