"In The Absence Of Love Bereft Of Fangs" by Abdulmueed Balogun

1. Everyone I ever ushered in here, my head, left a gash or two; consciously or unconsciously expunged some luminous clans of my soul. 2. Forgive me, admirers, for always being skeptical, whenever you tell me you picture your heaven between my lush lips. 3. There’s a caution tape before my chest, it will take mere mortals a thousand years to lift, a few hundreds for resolute gods. 4. Moving on is but a walkover expedition only on the canvas of our imaginations, in the edifice of our dreams. 5. I have been trapped like a butterfly for years in the steel web of my imaginations, forgotten there’s something called reality. 6. I guess it’s my animal instinct veering— like a car with bad brakes— to life, for when your consciousness had been crippled repeatedly by those you conjured eternity with, you unconsciously rely like a wounded dog on the dictates of your subconscious. 7. When you left, I rummaged through the endless rooms in my body, hoping to find hanging on the wan walls the portrait of the day I treated you like a dishrag. 8. I have been searching for forever, and I haven’t come across a split second filled with the memory of a moment I summoned a flux of dark tears from your doe-eyes by my actions or inactions. 9. But, divine peace will always thrust forward to the podium of your mind when after years of searching you unearth no sticky regret lingering on your street of thoughts. 10. So, in the absence of love bereft of fangs, I forged a beloved out of my crooked ribs.

Abdulmueed Balogun is a black poet based in Nigeria who has been published in: The Westchester Review, Soundings East Magazine, ROOM, Watershed Review, Hawaii Pacific Review and elsewhere.