WHY NOT STAY
by OJO TAIYE
again, what do i know about staying? what metaphor can i use to describe this bumper
sticker narrative hanging from my mouth—how nothing ever changes— not the scenery
or the streets ransacked by harmattan like a warning. how easily the ritual of a season
becomes us: winter opens & opens— & i’m still trying to figure out if i really want to
be alive. forgive me this struggle of hope. for as much as i want to be happy, it is there
i lose. i cannot see beyond it. of all my regrets, this is the worst— & when the tides are
surging home, my very name becomes a vanishing flower. even now— i name my
fears—late affection & the memory of it is a bird itself shuddering. tender is the hard
work of doubt— believe me. tired & thirsty, another word for my hands sandwiching
little shards in the snow. there is something so precious about the fracture of acacias.
so, it’s no wonder i still find myself looking to blue throated robins for solace. it ends
how it begins: i didn’t become the man i imagined—i brought what i had learned of
birds & forgiveness to my daily life & it failed me. what’s left behind is the realities of
a bewildering kinship of language & prayer. maybe i’m a poem unhappy to be born --
just what is true & true. every night i wake & fall between the place of childhood & a
constellation of god’s period showing us our teeth.
by OJO TAIYE
again, what do i know about staying? what metaphor can i use to describe this bumper
sticker narrative hanging from my mouth—how nothing ever changes— not the scenery
or the streets ransacked by harmattan like a warning. how easily the ritual of a season
becomes us: winter opens & opens— & i’m still trying to figure out if i really want to
be alive. forgive me this struggle of hope. for as much as i want to be happy, it is there
i lose. i cannot see beyond it. of all my regrets, this is the worst— & when the tides are
surging home, my very name becomes a vanishing flower. even now— i name my
fears—late affection & the memory of it is a bird itself shuddering. tender is the hard
work of doubt— believe me. tired & thirsty, another word for my hands sandwiching
little shards in the snow. there is something so precious about the fracture of acacias.
so, it’s no wonder i still find myself looking to blue throated robins for solace. it ends
how it begins: i didn’t become the man i imagined—i brought what i had learned of
birds & forgiveness to my daily life & it failed me. what’s left behind is the realities of
a bewildering kinship of language & prayer. maybe i’m a poem unhappy to be born --
just what is true & true. every night i wake & fall between the place of childhood & a
constellation of god’s period showing us our teeth.
Ojo Taiye is a young Nigerian who uses poetry as a handy tool to hide his frustration with the society.