Every night, peer into the edges of darkness, searching for dawn.
I’ve seen people we feed our power to
wine greedily on our tears, then vomit on our faces.
It gets my stomach upset.
If the dusk’s beauty comes with nightmares,
no matter the day,
no matter the hand you lend to anxiety,
lend the other to yourself and pull your bones to bed.
Wake up to refreshing dews, joyful buds,
and grasses growing out like knives
from the cracked joints of your cemented dust.
Grow. Sharpen your tongue and sheath it in your mouth.
The best attack, surprise.
When we grieve the ones we’ve lost
and those lost in a war not theirs,
mold fewer days into your sorrow and theirs.
Leave the rest to live your life and theirs,
your joys and their joys, your fight and their fights.
Hollow body, multiple souls.
The heart comes in chambers,
and there is room for everyone we introduce to inhalation.
Breathe.
When they come in spring
to cut the family branches and leave the roots to rot,
show them the winters in your mouth.
Graft these names in their memory,
and let the buds be evergreen.
Let the spring that bothers drown them in autumn.
Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi, a black poet, won the Deconflating Surveillance with Safety contest and received commendation at the 2024 HART Prize for Human Rights. He was a finalist in the Hayden’s Ferry Review Poetry Prize ’23, with work featured or forthcoming in POETRY, Heavy Feather Review, Strange Horizons, and more.
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