Nocturne in Rosewater

By Nnamdi Ndiolo

I love you like petrichor clinging to scent leaves,
like the warm hum of vinyl spinning vintage blues,
like Laudates threading the veins of Vespers—

like Sunday supper—shoes shed from fatigued feet,
knees kissing beneath the table as the casserole cools.
This love, a confession in the chapel’s hush.

This love, a drunk sky haemorrhaging on the rooftop,
an ache rebaptizing Mary’s eyes, anointing the cross,
the spot where the Son sprawls open like a moth,
and the moth lunging at the flame again:
mad zealot, faithless apostle.

Your eyes, constellations steeped in rosewater.
Your hips, rosary beads rounded in benediction.
Fireflies gild the vestry with a litany of small suns

as our lips—comets—collide into vows.
And the moon, that silent seminarian,
brands us holy with its broken gospel.

BIO:
Nnamdi Ndiolo, Swan XIX, is a poet, voice-over artist and actor of Igbo heritage. Winner of The Factory Fiction Poetry Prize 2025, he was also shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship Poetry Prize 2025 and the Palette Poetry Previously Published Poem Prize 2025. His work interrogates faith, grief, identity, erasure, state violence, survival, and otherness. He has been published in New Orleans Review, The Shallow Tales Review, The Kalahari Review, and Konya Shamsrumi. He tweets at @mirrorofbryan and grams at @firelord_bryan. Reach him at ndiolonnamdi@gmail.com and at +2348023735880.