Spring opens me like a ripe fig.
Honey-drizzled autopsy leaving
behind selfish drops of dew.

Every March the maple leaves and
the feeling I will never find a place
to set my bones down, remains.

Mistaking saints for lovers,
lovers for saints, counting coins
next to old poets’ holy beds.

I lace up my boots and begin
the snow-covered pilgrimage
of writing all of this down.

They tell me when the ice melts,
this place won’t feel half as lonely.

Old and new friends will come to
greet you at the door of the new season
as long as you make it that long.

A family of deer make their way across
the white virgin field and I start to weep.

The trees open up their arms and shake
off the remnants of their eternal nap.

How many beautiful secrets does winter hide,
how many graceful lives lie covered by its cold dark hand.

Heart in my fist and backpack full of the wrong words,
I board the plane back home with the promise of a summer
that doesn’t end with my name etched in stone.

The world keeps ending and welcoming me,
and who am I not to hold onto that?

The Yoruba phrase, awọn eniyan wa o si lọ bi oṣupa ṣe nyọ ti o si n lọ,
means people come and go as the moon waxes and wanes.

The moon poets write about it as the same moon
that guided my way to and from the hospital.

Yet it does not begin to encompass
the pain that stayed after you left.

I was suffocating in a sea of your mortal ashes.
Now, this phrase takes on a new meaning.

It means the somberness of my mother tongue
and how because of my unpaid debt to you,

I will never be able to make a promise
in this sacred language again.

It is my first language and therefore defines my roots.
English is my second language and is my most
familiar and therefore reflects my identity.

When they are placed side by side,
it is a jarring sight—like me.

After all this time away from home, I still struggle to pronounce
every single word I utter, correctly, accurately, meticulously.

Language defines your place in a foreign, unconquered land.
Is this truly where I belong?

I am slowly losing the things that tie me to Ile-Ife;
my language, and my ancestors and yet for some reason,
I am still unable to put old ghosts to rest.

Cicadas weep their rhythmic longings
for meteor-showered mornings in June.

I weep with you, sewn breast to palm,
to tired nymphs, their tender glances,
rose-cheeked with Hera.

You are all beginnings, sweet iuvenis.
Nectar-tongued, framed by the feminine
gentle misunderstood mother, Aphrodite.

Painted indigo crushed on the roof of your throat.
Circle of pine and fire smoke.

I hold you so, from you, I rose once again.
Your waxing moon bitter ash of victory.

Entomb me in sacrilegious death.
So estranged from femininity.

He caressed me as divine Eros and I.

A covenant in wishbones,
new mornings and blessed June.