Transformation

by Olalekan Hussein

This foaming water forming polychrome bubbles reminds me of nestling here before;

ferrying on radiant flowers with boys whose larynxes where pull out by sharp knives,

like slaughtering the throat of an orange in the month of Ramadan.

I’m talking about boys who were insignias of bliss in their mothers’ eyes before earth rejected their bodies.

In an Arabic class of thirty pupils, the Muhaleem asks what our country has offered us

& a friend stands up with a funeral face & says: this country has offered me perpetual grief to preserve.

in this universe, I’ve watched life kicked a man from bed into a cathedral of tombstones.

I’ve watched life kicked a BRT girl into the hollow mouth of heaven.

I’ve watched life accompanied an Indian pauper into an abode of thirsty pyres scavenging blood.

I’ve watched life kicked many memories into oblivion like gas penetrates into a gas cylinder.

all these, I cannot say to God, lest I become a portrait of another broke boy broken into threnodies.

every second, my body alters into melanomas searching for light in a dark tunnel,

my soul becomes a rough bud morphing into a squeezed flower.

there are no miracles here, just people wearing people’s skins,
people answering people’s names in foreign ways.

I wonder how to walk through the vastness of a water
& let the greatness of God speak into my skin with transformation.

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