You contested everything. You fought for
& against everything. The sense, the senseless,
The gradually making sense, the already perfect
Sense— you fought. Stubbornly. You fought.
& that is why today, today makes no sense.
Today, we upturned the rumpled sheets
In search for everything stubborn & persistent
Like you, your mirror in the world’s eye.
A clutch of stars filled the night sky like bullets
Lodged in the tenement of a bleeding body.
& I am what insists in my sadness ravaged
Like two burnt villages. My feet studying
The geography of your gaze, as I treaded your eyes
That just can never let anything go. Per adventure
We filled the God’s pocket with nails & sands
And hope the dangerous part remains over
& divined. We would be aging now, & love would
Mean nothing more than a vow kept in a book
I would never open. You remind me of everything
But me; behind the background everything is dying
But how pyrrhic this is. How contestable this is:
That you may die & not get the chance to put up a fight.
Prosper Ìféányí is a Nigerian poet. His works are featured in Prairie Schooner, Transition, Plume, Shenandoah, Muzzle Magazine, Denver Quarterly, RHINO, and elsewhere. He is currently pursuing a MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, where he currently lives.
