This is how I learnt how to say “God, kiss me, you are a beautiful creator”

By Shitta Faruq Adémólá

Today, I awoke on God’s lap.
Tomorrow will be the festival of flying and yes, I will fly into the wind.
Tell your mother I have just received a scar on my left ear- I
am now permitted to morph into miracles.
Tell her my tongue has lost the taste of pain,
and all that is left is the sweetness in my tooth.
Tell her I am the new hymn in a bird’s mouth.
In heaven, there is a space for lovers
who lived their lives without a touch of grief.
God kisses their lips,
pats their backs with his tender palm,
and gives them the audacity to perch on thorny trees.
I have always wanted to hold joy
like a baby’s soft palm; I
sing and cry to God to look onto my pale face.
Now I know what it means to sing of one’s brightness,
to give a star its place in the sky.
Now I know how to tell God I have been beautiful,
despite the many plagues in a poem.

BIO:
Shitta Faruq Adémólá is a young Muslim Poet, Phone Photographer and Fiction Writer From Nigeria. He is the author of a forthcoming microchap “All I Know Is I Am Going To Be Beautiful One Day” (Ghost City Press, 2021), and a chapbook “Night Club With Dogs” (INKspired, 2021). His works have appeared or are forthcoming in Jalada Africa, Dream Glow, Serotonin, FERAL, Third Estate Art, Rigorous Magazine, Icefloe Press, and elsewhere. He is the winner of the Fitrah review poetry prize, 2021; a joint winner in the Shuzia PenProtest Contest, 2020; a joint winner in the Shuzia redemption poetry contest 2021, and a joint winner in PIN 10-DAY Poetry challenge (November 2020). He is a Poetry editor at Litround, and tweets @shittafaruqade1.