I Begin This Poem On A Note Of Pain To What Might Seem As A Self-journey On A Route To Giving Up

I have tried enough to hold this heart from falling.
Hope is an assurance that slips away from me gradually.

Today, I’m a blurry shadow fading back into myself. & tomorrow,
I’m half-dead & half-alive walking amidst people.

On this journey to self-recovery, nothing recovers me.
Instead, I’m a full bread of grief reducing into crumbs.

In the landscape of my mind, I think of so many things:
Home, my dead father, my widowed mother & my siblings.

Say, they keep this body moving from crashing completely.

Last year, I moved to another city I never knew her length of hardship.
Each route I take to becoming beautiful finds me absorbing a mole of
sadness in a little body as mine.

Sometimes I cut myself with a blade to behold the nakedness of pain.
Nothing surprising but different openings lining up like a fleet of cars on my
skin.

I’m grounded on this journey to finding my beautiful self.
Perhaps, If you do not find me here tomorrow, I became a train
that rammed into heaven

By Emmanuel Ojeikhodion

Biography:

Emmanuel Ojeikhodion is a Nigerian-Edo emerging writer, poet & essayist. He writes to expunge his monstrous demons & documents the ripples from society. He has works published / forthcoming in Capsule Stories, The Lunch Bucket Brigade, Cons-cio Magazine, Chachalaca Review, Museum of Poetry, Déraciné Mag, Rigorous & elsewhere. He’s a finalist in the Best of Kindness Poetry contest 2020 from Origami Poems Project. He recently compiled his first Poetry chapbook & seeks a home for it. He’s a lover of Country & old Songs He tweets at @hermynuel.