A Mouthful for Absent Nights

(2025)

Nights sit on my chest till/ I regurgitate the hunger I consumed/ Like a vulture tearing 

at the carcasses/ Of an elephant and her calf

I become 

Water – flowing 

Into the emptiness created/ By a god’s desertion

I become 

Wind – rushing 

To scatter dry bones/ Robbing them of/ The dignity of funeral rites

Mother,

Swear–

When the waters 

Of my birth broke

Earth did not spit them out

Turning me away

Before my first inhale

Between the water and the first cry/ There was a night that ingrained itself/ Into the pink 

of my gums

There was a night

That coiled itself 

Into my fisted palms

After my arrival/ The night scattered its memories/ Bearing the prayers I never chewed 

in the womb/ Leaving husks of its forsaken phantoms/ Burning on my fresh navel

Mother,

Tell me–

Was the moon full

On the night of my naming?

Tell me/ Before the letters in my name cut like blades/ Bleeding me into a dry wind/ That swirls

to drink the night’s quiet sorrow

Tell me, 

Is this the body 

You breathed me into?

Or did I stumble into/ Chronicles of memories/ That etched themselves into my skin?/ Making

me a site of remembrance/ For words I can neither form/ Nor hold in my mouth

Tell me, Mother,

Before 

My tongue blisters

With the sting of words 

Scraping the walls 

Of a parched throat

I, sometimes go searching/ For this night that stole its translation from me/ Its absence shrinking

the words on my tongue/ Into a series of lyrical utterances/ That release the oaths inscribed 

in the cavities of my teeth

But 

Before there is relief,

The body writhes

Like a cursed snake

Bites its tail

In a cycle of infinite torment

Before the night grants me my wish/ It pries my mouth open/ And voids slither in/ Dissolving 

the accents on my tongue/ Attaching themselves to the ancestry/ Of a bruised and strained tongue

That lacks the fitting name

For a night stripped 

Of its birthright;

A night exiled

To crown itself 

In the shame of its rejection