By Abdulmueed Balogun Adewale
(For Shabina Feisal)
Take this tawdry dunya
by the edge, like the frail wings
of a moth, with the tips of your fingers.
Take life as a staged melodrama
full of cameos, seasons
of plots and tons of twists.
Take every step as if pacing
the palms of a slippery road gravid
with thorns and ancient brambles.
Take your aching soul out of your body
everyday on your prayer mat,
before the sun draws its first breath,
Bare your worries before Allah,
he shall handpick the gritty grains of sadness,
darkness ingrained on the walls
of your mind, deposited on the wooden
ledge of your soul by the murky
procession of life’s swift caravan.
Take yourself as the victim, habibi,
forgive the bullet, the trigger
and triggerer.
Take everyday, beloved, as a journey
towards selfhood, towards light that
won’t flicker before the storm of life.
BIO:
Abdulmueed Balogun Adewale is a black poet and an undergrad at the University of Ibadan. He’s a Pushcart prize and BOTN Nominee. A 2021 HUES Foundation Scholar and a poetry editor at The Global Youth Review. He prays silently in his heart, that his verses outlive him. He was a finalist in the 2021 Wingless Dreamer Book of Black Poetry Contest, Winner 2021 Annual Kreative Diadem Poetry Contest. His poems have been published in: Brittle Paper, Soundings East Magazine, ROOM, Watershed Review, Decolonial Passage, The Westchester Review, The Oakland Arts Review, Subnivean Magazine, Short Vine and elsewhere. He tweets from: AbdmueedA