Your Body.

I

Your body

is lying awake at 1:00am as it does every morning

cradling a memory; this time, of a rainy day

sometime in December when your laughter awoke the sky.

Or was it the smell of Dare’s perfume

that time he tasted your skin?

Or was it the awful honesty that pierced the room

when Adele sang Rolling in the Deep?

Once upon that day

you had been a child again

your body, it remembers.

It was the last time it felt something.

II

Your body

is sitting half-perched

on the office chair in the library,

your phones are idly by your side,

they have forgotten how to ring.

Careless papers, empty biros

are making rounds on your clueless table;

and your fingers, on their own

expel their rage on your laptop screen–

Bfgweusugkknlrjtrl;trk;./’rtlF”sb.

Punctuation marks are for the idle minds

and typos are a part of life.

Your body, it now knows

there is no promise in tomorrow

so even when the right words fail,

the wrong ones must suffice

because sometimes

people just want to see you try.

 

III

Your body!

It merges

with the tears streaming from your eye.

Some days are good, other days are better

but some days are made just for you to cry.

So, your body, it convulses

from the weight of memories within,

haunted by the halo

of hands held and lips kissed,

overwhelmed by the might of stories

untold; about chances you never took,

experiences un-lived

Yet, your body!

It picks itself up from the floor of your bathroom because

nights are for coconut shampoo showers and

mourning the things you almost had.

_____

This is a piece inspired by Morayo’s poem “Your Body”, in the book Like a Mule bringing Ice cream to the Sun by Sarah Ladipo Mayinka.

Thank you Sheedart for sharing the wonderful book with me. I heart you, big time. 

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© The Short Black Girl, 2017.