Don’t be afraid to weave your truth
into a duvet. Sing your demon a lullaby,
let it sleep. Give existence a name, a lucid flame
you wear without fear on your flesh—peel
your lips, and tell me how freely you allowed
yourself to taste life. Shapeshift.
Remember to thrust your hand
into the depth of your soul. Watch yourself burn
little by little, into a stump. For we pass from silence
into knowing the face of God. There you will
throw a fist in the air or pass your saucer of agonies.
Take, my aches, feed, lap up my pain, unbridled,
overflowing its brook. What is love but a body looking
for death in a flower face, a lace of music. Body
aflame, madly hungry for a bowl of puffer fish.
How many decades have you burned searching the depth
of your being for that which is so near, yet abandoned?
Don’t be afraid of dying, of yielding yourself, purple
deer on love’s altar, watching fragments
of you fall off, slowly, magic rain.
Damilola Omotoyinbo, Frontier XIX, is a Nigerian Creative Writer. A Fellow of the Ebedi International Writers’ Residency. Damilola won the 2021 SprinNG contest, got the Lolwe Classes Scholarship, and was longlisted for the 2022 African Writers Awards and the Writing Ukraine Prize. She has work published or forthcoming in Ake Review, New Feathers Anthology, Olongo Africa, The South Shore Review, The Deadlands, Brittle paper, Agbowó, Pepper Coast Lit, Afritondo, AHC, Better Than Starbucks, TSTR, Nigerian Tribune Newspaper and elsewhere. Damilola studied Biochemistry. Her happy places are; Pinterest, YouTube and the church. She tweets @_Damilola_O.
