The Dead Way of Seeing Things

By Chinecherem Enujioke

On this beach, there is no one.
The footprints say too much.

About the past.
Things that remain unsaid but heard.
Voices reaching to join the hallelujah

from the church atop the hill.
I raise the sand
and feel the wind snatch them.
A stone after another.

I touch the trees
and their leaves turn yellow.
Like they have been wanting to let go.
The earth, wanting too much.

The sun refuses to turn upon this place.
The waves roar like a clanging cymbal.
Even their tides are weak
and fight something
they cannot defeat.

There is a body.
A woman. Midnight-black.
Her hair, knotted like Medusa’s.
Only they do not hiss.
A silver anklet on her.

I crave the knowledge the land rejects.
I take the form of an ant
and join the trail of the ones inside.
Outside. Everywhere.

On this body. One piece apart.
Everything leaves this body. Everything.
Until everything is nothing.
And this body becomes an empty port
where vultures hover.

Even the blood, blue as it is, flows like the tides.
Only it never returns.
I crawl over her eyes.
They are bare with questions.
Like she saw rapture and it was not hers.

I close them, assume this body
and walk into the ocean.
There I burn her, immerse my body
and pluck an olive from the green.

BIO:
Chinecherem Enujioke is an emerging poet and undergraduate at Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka where she studies Human Anatomy. She is the research editor of The Moulder, a secondary school magazine that publishes issues relating to girl-child education.
When she is free, she reads Greek and Roman mythologies and engages in dramatic monologue before her mirror. Connect with her on Twitter @VCEnujioke and on Facebook @Chinecherem Veronica Enujioke.