Elegy for an absence

By Sosy Imafidon

walking into memory through the orifice of a purple scar 

i found mother inventing newer ways to embalm her grief

when a body grows cold it does so in degrees—

rapidly through everything that seems to cauterize 

the agony on a mother’s lips

i foresee the decay & treat the body with natron

before it becomes the exhumation of nightmares.

only a mother would bury herself alive

in an attempt to keep the night from drinking her child

because the difference between a garden & a grave 

is what you bury under.

ma, i am planting my body in the yard,

beside the milkweeds, praying it blooms

praying a body continues into its own ceremony,

mother, edith—weeping her eyes into an ocean 

until all that remains of her is salt.

so, i learn her this way:

by     

                  absence 

                                               first

by the way my eyes sell the longing when i say

iyevwen repeatedly, & no one answers

because my mouth is an orifice made into a sepulcher 

& every echo buries itself in my throat

fire lights up in the larynx, 

a scream burns to char,

a prayer burns alongside.

Sosy Imafidon is a Nigerian poet known for dense, philosophical contemporary poetry and publications in literary journals such as Brittle Paper, African Writer Magazine, The Shallow Tales Review and elsewhere. When Sosy is not writing poems, he’s busy playing chess.