or shoot my sleep to death?
I needn't wonder why I couldn't sleep:
I know your thought steals away each minute.
Did I let you know of your secret,
your cute fragrance to my nose?
It lures me away from dreams
to cuddle my aches in my head.
Sweetheart, I can paint
each of your skin hair
by the hands of my heart.
Your image is imprinted there
painfully, I say,
painfully
like the roughness on oak's bark,
even like wet sores on Lazarus' hips:
he cannot touch it without a tear;
yet, without a caress its pangs
choke breath out of his nose,
out of his heart.
I cannot write my next line of poetry
without my missing you,
without a drop that tears my iris
running across the sketch of your face.
D...drea...
s, do they occur in real life?
Or why do I see your face while I cry?
For verily there's a piece of thistle
that bleeds the skin of my heart:
and with every struggling palpitation,
it pierces deeper into my veins.
My marrows wail like—
like they're slowly consumed
in the lava of an ocean of fire
captured by savage rocks.
For tho' I do not recollect
the likeness of my birth,
Darling, I can fetch the soil
where you stood when I first saw you.
Your memory's never erased in me,
not a bit of it:
the smile of your face,
the chuckle in your laugh,
the sobriety when you're grave,
when you're sad how you hide.
It's never erased from my sight:
Or who can remove the blood of the heart
without taking my breath to let go?
Like the second drizzle of this harmattan,
each tear icily thrust my cheeks
in this one cold night—
gracious me! it's dawn—
sleep loved my sorrow
and left me to meditate on its memories.
And I,
I am given cries to remember.```
_Adelere Adesina_