Evolution—Abdulrazaq Salihu

         

EVOLUTION.

In this waltz, I carry you in my mouth;

Between little piano keys that snowflake wars.

On this floor my body is brass; grief stricken metal and 

A wall is a leaf on fire so my mother looses her throat 

And tried to pronounce requiem, she lifts her right palm

And becomes a lotus, she lurches towards a mirror 

To gather my fate and father’s reflections, she waters her face,

Counts periwinkles, colours and the shell of a snail beside a broken pot.

She embodies a fish that drowned of thirst 

And through the wind binoculars; a lapel folds a ladle

Through the kitchen window. A wild flower sprouts

From my mother’s palm and we are two steps into evolution;

A wormhole that made my father’s journey to soil 1 mile

Away from home; a recapulation of carefully collected snapshots 

Of my father’s bones; his father’s bones; bones and more bones are now

Tree branches transforming into grief.

I dance; you dance; northern hemisphere harbours a hiccup and 

My mother drowns.

I grow; you try to; you fail; schizophyta and rhizopus gather dead organic 

Matter intracellularly and my brother is found identifying himself 

A saprophyte.

I decline; my mother swallows earth; she drowns in between a 

Floating microscopic heterotroph and grouped us into a photo album;

Zooplanktons. I name it grief,

She names me son and shades of coat colour counters my decline;

She names me an x-gene and I pause in between her war-teeth and a

River of thirst rubbing my chest gently.