Leaving

Ridwan Fasasi

It’s quite a sight, the car,
as it rattled passed the old trees, into the yellow dust.
Dried forsythia on the black tire.
Something is murdered, out of innocence,
to save another. Unlike the trees in their
absence of leaves, the boys waved their hand,
as they followed the trails of what is left
of the smoke. After you left, beloved,
something keeps weeping inside my mother,
who is also your mother. I still don’t know
how to tame the wildlings in her heart;
something keeps slithering into her,
glints in the shame of her life: please,
do not forget the way back home if the wind
do not make you home. Beloved,
I have turned the family portrait facedown.
I don’t know how to mourn what
I cannot save, and it’s been a while
I have held my life, my beautifully broken life,
in my hands. I am climbing out of my
agony. That little room of night.
But the window, here, has refused me of
both my morning and mourning.
It was too late then, and even now,
the early birds inside my stomach
are burdened by what eats into them.
The worms have learnt how not
to be deceived by the unfolding of the
first light of the dawn. I have arrived
at your destination, and what I thought
was the end of my sorrow
was only the beginning of another.

BIO:

Ridwan Fasasi, SWAN I, is a Nigerian editor, writer, and art curator of Yoruba Descent. His works have appeared on ANMLY Lit, Chestnut Review, Palette Poetry, Frontier Poetry, Euonia Review, Akpata, Lucent Dreaming, The Shallow Tales Review, Strange Horizon, Hindsight Creative, among others. Find him on Twitter (sorry X) @Ibn_Yushau44.