phantom

By Rahma O. Jimoh

i hold this place with all of
its blue waters, dazzling sunlight,
tulips & bougainvillea—
i transcend into water,
curl around fleets of flowers.
like a creek, unafraid,
i pour into others & the sea
mirrors the sky’s vastness.
beyond the shores, i see people
being people; not a single
white, black, yoruba, muslim or atheist.
just people doing people things,
glowing in the dearth of misfortunes
their dreams— colourful bubbles
curving into being.
i imagine my homeland as rivulets
that flow out of itself
a home where wingless birds can
whirl about the sky;
where i can live in my skin without
the fear of its melanin coming off
an invitation to a cop’s hungry bullet
whose eyes see my scarf as a detonator.

BIO:
Rahma O. Jimoh (She/Her) is a writer and nature photographer. She is a Hues Foundation scholar and a Pushcart Prize Nominee. She edits for The Quills and reads for Chestnut Review. A lover of sunsets and monuments, she has been published or forthcoming in Feral, Lucent Dreaming, So To Speak Journal, Ice Floe Press, Olongo Africa and The Hellebore. Rahma was recently shortlisted as a top writer in the Hysteria Writing Contest, the Abubakar Gimba Prize for Fiction & the Eriata Oribhabor Poetry Prize.
Twitter/Instagram: dynamicrahma