BACK TO THE BEGINNING WHICH IS TO SAY I AM AT THE END
let me take you to before the un-flowering.
the dissolution & cracked skin. before heaven rejected my body
& i let greatness fall out of my mouth
in chunkfuls of liquid light. before the splitting
open & roadkill dash & blasphemy kissed tongue.
before, when i called myself a god & birthed scenarios into reality.
when i could feel wings hesitating
to spring from my back. that night we kissed
after passing the bottle back and forth between us,
i felt something disappear from me. i became ordinary,
the mystery surrounding my shadow unspooling into
long threads of sorrow & neglect. there is no magic here,
just a child blossoming into an adult, falling back into a child’s
blossoming again.
—from Rattle #75, Spring 2022
__________
Olabimpe Adedamola: “I am a law student in Lagos, Nigeria. I found a huge poetry collection in the library of my secondary school and it felt like magic. And I wanted to create this kind of magic. To awe people. And so, I wrote.”
