Friday, August 11
EXIT, SELF
Moons fat in fields.
Odd matter, shrapnel, scrap the year
we walked the Ketu mile
through the ageing bridge into dust
markets. Posters of the last dictator
who, deposed, grew catatonic, bearded, littering walls.
We agreed the beard made his eyes look kind, near-paternal.
Each time I lit a match, you put the flame out in your mouth. Smoke coming
as the halogen rings of an unoccupied planet. You kept losing
scarves in street wells. At the beach we stood near the Atlantic,
ahistoric and mortal, made the cheap two-minute
photographs. Bones of a Ferris wheel so close to us.
A single horseman
pulled his horse through
the shoreline. Shells were brought to our feet
by water. Coconuts opened by their heads for us.
Year after year, I have taken, unpaid historian,
pictures of clouds. Rested my hands on bodies;
not the migrants washed ashore, but of dolphins. Dreamed you split
in multiples. Not like dead but sistering. A safe unicellular animal, capable of self exits.
Your face in boxed IG squares. You leaning against the ledge of a Quebecian house
among unfamiliar faces online, friends, and between the caryatids
of an unknown city. The moon fields and odd matter,
ours, forgotten, and you swimming in blue
tides toward them.
(Kéchi Nne Nomu)