One Poem by Tajudeen Muadh
for a home to wilt
for a home to wilt, it means the walls of it are burrowed by bullets. that is to say where this home bleeds is where our body is painted and it is where our bones are creasing into a pulp where everything peaceful is dying. that is to say the fireflies in Gaza are a strip of my body. fireflies are beautiful things turning to things morphing into the parallel universe.
this home turns back into my poem like a bird flying into an hour that is slowly wilting into a drowned hope.
mother says to hope is to plant a white Lily on one's tongue, forgetting that my tongue was cut off by the gunshots that plunge into my chest.
they say, bodies lying lifelessly on this street means that to burn is peace, to learn the language of fire, to plait your tongue in ways that can pronounce pain without slacking.
for a home to wilt, do we have to die many times teaching our body to try out slacking into shreds of gun-powder?
Tajudeen Muadh is a young poet from Osun State, Nigeria. His works have appeared or are forthcoming in different literary magazines and journals such as Kalahari Review, Wax Poetry, African poetry magazine, brittle paper, meniscus journal, decolonial passage, Tuskegee Review and elsewhere.