by Abu Bakr Sadiq
it took me months to get here: this paradise for the once-broken.
I often consider myself undeserving of tenderness. it seems, I no longer
need to mourn everything I’ve lost to time. it’s midnight again—
I sit by a riverbank, watching the moon learn new ways to stretch itself
above water. asleep & dreaming, a boy hands me a note & runs
till I can't tell the wind from his body. it says what you came looking for
will find you. says thank you. says you are welcome. the boy offers me
a ride on an asteroid. we land on the floor of a room & a clock
is melting on the wall. hand in hand, we guide each other towards light.
he shows me the universe—so small, I could push it through a pinhole.
all I've ever wanted was to fill myself with enough bliss to betray
my blues. I admit, I've always thought my mouth too tough
for something fragile as laughter. it is true that my mind had been
a beehive brimming with workers & a dead queen; that I've shared
rooms with the ghosts of woes that failed to break me. I have no idea
which planet we are floating through at the moment but I am in love
with my newfound weightlessness. I want nothing more than to dwell
between these orbits. to be the first to welcome a comet before it basks
in sunlight. I'm making rooms inside me to contain this delight rushing
towards me. a song spills from a planet floating under my feet. when the
chorus comes on, I hear my name in undertones. somewhere, I hear of
someone bargaining the price of gaiety. I wonder what was ever inside me.
ABU BAKR SADIQ is a Nigerian poet. He’s a 2022 Rhysling Award for best Speculative Poetry nominee. His work appears or is forthcoming in Uncanny Magazine‚ FIYAH, Mizna, Iskanchi Press & Magazine, Nativr Skin Lit Magazine, Zone 3 Press Magazine, Palette Poetry, The Lit Quarterly, Rockvale Review and elsewhere. He writes from Minna. Find him on twitter @bakronline.
Levitation can be found in Augur Magazine Issue 5.1.
