it was her death day—the roses
bloomed in my mother’s saltless

mouth, they bloomed everywhere
—in her dry cheek, in the spaces

between her teeth, on the marble
of her tongue, every tiny bud blessed—

the roses were red as roses are,
or should be—like you I forget 

now what to call this thing—I
told Beloved it is Grief, Trauma,  

one is not the other, the other
is not one, seven eyes the color  

of dusk—it was dusk
when it happened,  

Father, do your hands forget
what they have done—how they crushed 

my violin into their breakfast
of ground manna & baby hair— 

again—what is the name for
what a father makes of the body

of his son: blades he plants
in soft places, the planting he calls

Love—& blades
are terrible things to carry
in the earth of the body—I testify,

I thirst, I fly—
how the Lord fed on my music, daggered

my rainbow—but I am not my wound
today—bird, brutal bird, 

go home,
the morning belongs to me.

Ernest O. Ògúnyẹmí is a writer and editor from Nigeria. His works have appeared/ are forthcoming in AGNI, Joyland, No Tokens, Agbowó, Southern Humanities Review, the McNeese Review, among others. He is a staff writer at Open Country Mag.