Your shadows clock in for their shift at 12 o’clock... at night

Hanging it’s cloak on your happiness and lying luxuriously on your chest. Their hours stealing your dreams and numbing them into painful memories.

We become a bath of obsession and depression
Our tears spelling out the words that our throats cannot read
We are an ocean of misled, overthought fantasies
A nation of unspoken miseries .

Our bones, rubbing against each other

Getting lost in the darkness of our humane cast
Trying to find themselves.
Itself.
Trying, to, rediscover the stories that make you one
Trying to align your purpose
But...
The shadows have won.

So you create a new self. A version that breathes in the heavy smoke that is your emotions.
A hemisphere where your shadows are your friends.
Buddies that allow for the dark half of your minds to dance in the abyss
Play in the dark
And whimper about the stories folded in your heart.

Sleep, my child.
Rest, my love.
Crumble, darling.
Be reborn, sweetheart.
Sleep,
Sleep.

I’ll never forget the day you suggested I write a poem about you.
It made my mind roll its eyes but let my insides blush...
because you already wrote it yourself on my lips and skin.

Your hands writing in cursive all over my body
Foreign punctuation squiggled in between my thighs
traced on my back
imprinted on my ***

Your poetry stamped in my muscles
The ink infested with my tears, your saliva and our magic.

Our Elixir

A recipe that secretly feeds Oshun during the world’s hunger strike.
Just when she’s quarter to famine we come again, and paint chapters
between our lips
between our eyes
between our finger webs
Us, embed single our potion within the air.

...

So here it is.
Based with friendship
Drizzled with Love
and garnished with our spirits.

Your Poem.
Our, Poem.

I will whisper stories into your ear so potent with love, that you can taste them.

The same way you taste the colours that dance in the sky.

The same way you taste your dreams during your high.

The same way you ******* lips.
The lips that whisper stories in your ear...

I lay my scalp to rest.
The cushions below it comforting my thoughts and caressing my dreams.
The mattress allowing my guardians and demons to sweep away the dust between my ribs
the webs under my skin.

Home, is where my spirit sleeps.

Where my thoughts become a whimsical fantasy
Where my reality is engulfed within the galaxies

Home, is a place that I cannot see.

A foreign land that feels like my great grandmother's hugs and my mother's cries.
The sphere where my screams match the symphonies that echo through the thick breath of the unknown.
A place where my tears match the rumbles of Kwamata's abode.

A realm where I touch God,
where he kisses my cheeks and reorganises my destiny
through every snooze
every snore.

Home, is where I humbly die and rise.
Home, is where my colourful insides fly.
Home, is the sanctuary between my eyes.

We planted seeds today
Pulps filled with different ridges dusted with the earth's breath,
were planted.

Each earthy fetus protected by the palms of their alpha tripped off their fingertips and glided their way into the dimension that lies under our feet.
A dimension where our ancestors whisper in sacred tongues and where the other half of our trees play in the mud.

This, is where our spirits are born.
This, is where your training begins
little one
earthy one
mystic one
This, is where you begin.

Where the trees' veins inquisitively tap on your shell
poke at your lifeless liveliness
Where the ancestors rattle your cage with their hums
Guiding you to taste your own rhythm

This, is where your spirit buds.
...
We planted seeds today.

The pulps resting in the dimension below your skin,
below your heart.
A dimension where your thoughts gossip and where your ancestors sleep.

This, is where IT begins
This, is where it breathes
where it sees
gracious one
fleshy one
cosmic one
This, is where we bleed.

...

We planted seeds today.
We, planted OUR seeds today
OUR seeds were planted today
we...
WE, were planted...
Today.

I sip on my green tea
wishing for it to cleanse me.
Wishing for it, to cleanse out the oils and the misery I consume.
Wishing for it to break down my toxins.
Wishing for it ... to cleanse the sections of myself that even I cannot reach.

Green Tea

A substance that supposedly detoxes the belly, but not strong enough to detox the soul

Not strong enough to take away my shadows, my doubt, my ego or my woes.
A drink, not strong enough to hug my spirit at its loneliest hours.
Yet, I sip
.. praying the wet herbs that tickle my tongue shall unlock the gateway, or the path, or the door... to my soul.

So I sip...
And sip...
And sip...

Swallowing it’s brew...and my tears.

My heart is a dormant volcano
locking its luscious lava under hills and droplets of rock.

My heart is a dormant volcano

Wishing to cry out its passion down its temples
Unleash its fiery tone
Ooze out its love, wonder and adventure.

My heart...
A potion made with stardust, honey, magic and lilies
Creating a Utopia so sacred.. that it remains sealed until the right
...
fire, bubbles my molten caves to an unknown ecstasy.

My heart ... is a dormant volcano
Burying its crystals in a core SO deep, that the energy they possess makes people’s skin creep.
The anger in my veins, compressing my elements into jewels.
Stardust
Honey,
Magic
and Lilies too.

My heart is a dormant volcano
Chanting a call for my lost loves to find the fire ...
To bubble my concoction
And let me drip --
Pour, my love into your battlefield and protect your scars.

But...
My heart is a dormant volcano.
Wishing to find its...

Fire.