'A HEGIRA INTO A GLEN' BY SUNDAY SAHEED.

A faded soprano, 

and an aura where sentiment

is weaved with glossy strands

from the flames of a blackish 

coin.

Shall we not tell them?

of your ordeals before

The afterlife? Your exodus into

a glen, shall we not, Akanbi

tell of your soul trotting on the shaft?

See a stale portrait of me

clutched in the fingers of 

an itchy palm.

too frail to hold my body,

too shaky to contain me.

Those are not tears,

they are the drops of hibiscus in an

autumn. They are regrets,

of how she could have clenched my body

& not the tip of my cloth.

Perhaps, I would have been 

inscribing this myself —

when I told, with my heavy jaws

of the thorns that pierce my heart.

my breath —weak, faint.

My words were stacked

as lofty as Babel

& it was thrown right back at 

me. Flakes of a

broken alphabet.

In this poem, I’m bidding 

everything adieu —the soul,

the body, tears & the cup

that poured from Valerian water,

dubbed with regrets.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE BARD.

Sunday T. Saheed is a Nigerian writer and the 1st runner-up for the Nigeria Prize for Teen Authors 2021. He has appeared or is forthcoming on Kalahari Review, Open Leaf Press Review, Cajun Mutt Press, Rigorous Magazine, Gyroscope Review, Spirited Muse Press, Giallo Lit, Cruzfolio and Applied Worldwide.