A BOY EATS HIS LOVER ON WATER

tethered to these shores, I bury my footprints forever,

racing to my lover’s erasure, nostalgia for warmth,

his heart is a life jacket for a drowning soul .

his ghost still walks the stretch of this beach,

calls me out for a leisurely dip into water.

I pile demise on my head as ashes & sprinkle evenly,

for droppings to gather round my feet.

I watch his ghost slowly ease into the sea,

returning to where death once plucked him.

I am here as witness to reunion with mother sea,

clasped hands accommodate acceptance,

tender about the past, he laughs off grief,

home is never a place to invest in pain.

I rejoin brother as his eyes linger around the sea,

for the coming of tides is how he proclaims movement,

like fleshed waves, he will slam into the deep.

I levitate his body, afloat with courage,

I bless this sacrifice by swallowing the entirety of his pain,

proclaiming his feet will kiss earth again,

we claw our way into a second loving.

By Michael Akuchie

Biography:

Michael Akuchie is a Nigerian young adult writer. His work is on Barren Magazine, Anti-Heroin Chic, Neologism Poetry Journal, Mojave Heart and elsewhere. He is @Michael_Akuchie on Twitter