The Self as Ongoing Construction: A Personal Metaphysics

Ismail Yusuf Olumoh

I will retell the story of light: somehow, I am in love again, 

or at least considering it. The night is undressing me. So long, 

there is no end to be seen of the violet dark. I want to invent 

myself into a conversation & ask someone to give me a name. 

I mean, I am looking to find myself in other people’s work,

even though love has wounded me many times, & taught me

silence as a form of shelter. I believe being quick about fixing 

my mistake will erase the damage. Love, I fanned the embers 

while your tongue leapt from the fire, singeing flesh, sending 

ash corkscrewing into the air. I have learned how to absorb 

every near-death, feasted on how to climb honeyed heights without 

a rope. Still, I want to believe there is light on the page. I fold myself 

like origami, crease by crease, until the paper of my spine forgets 

its weight. I stitch new names into the marrow of my hands, paint new 

constellations over the maps of my lungs. Each morning, I baptize

my reflection in the fountain of could-have-beens, saying: rise again—

rise as someone unafraid to tremble in the light, to scald the night

with their own fire. I am learning how to excavate myself from 

the ruins of older bodies, I carry skeletons like lanterns, their ribcages

radiating possibilities, their teeth gnawing at the history that tethered 

me. If I fall into a mirror, I will not shatter; I will multiply. The cracks 

will become windows through which someone else might step to inhabit 

a shape I have not named. Every breath is a blueprint. I am self-forged, 

a cathedral built of all the fragments that others called debris. & when

I fall back into the world, I do not carry fear. I carry the audacity of my own 

invention— the decision that I will not be the person yesterday demanded. 

I am the answer crouching in the shadow of my spine. I am myself, endlessly 

remade, & I will not apologize for the magnitude of my becoming. My throat 

was capable of many different sounds but the pleasure was in keeping silent, 

letting parts of me be seen. I believe some truths are louder when left unsaid.

Biography:

Ismail Yusuf Olumoh, SWAN VII, is a writer and teacher pursuing a DVM at the University of Maiduguri. He won the Babatunde Babafemi Educational Foundation's Prize for Poetry (2024) and the Folio Literary Journal Poetry Prize (2025). His works appear/forthcoming in South Carolina Review, Bore Score Lit, April Centaur, Agbowó Magazine, Eye To The Telescope, Palette Poetry, Brittle Paper, Shallow Tale Reviews, Eunoia Review, Rowayat, Strange Horizons, and others. He is a reader in ONLY POEM. He writes from Ilorin, Kwara State. You can read him here: linktr.ee/icreatives0