by
Michael Akuchie
Boy Crisis
There is death in your mouth,
the words run you over on its way out
The hurt leans closer,
firmly establishing a name in your body.
You handle hope wrongly,
your life is a sunken city.
You could be Atlantis:
city of loss with all of the shine flooded,
the water swallows your soul,
loves you like a deserted island,
loves your body like a war,
anoints your head with grief.
sadness crawls like the stretch of your face,
learns the back roads to your emotions,
smells your gloominess,
you’re the height of autumn,
you remain grief kissed,
pain burned.
Your voice is a dead shadow,
too cracked to hug the wall.
You go out in the sun,
display the length of your hurt,
let in the light of a lover,
break your own heart,
solidify your pain.
You know your body as a hole,
gigantic void bearing a boy’s broken life,
shards of loss in glass left untouched by God.
Boy Echo
boy is single boy is a no-name town he kisses death welcome
or desolation boy is allergic to sunlight boy wears darkness
on a starry night boy is dewy eyed happiness is a fuel emptied
out & so he dates a cigarette rolls up a miracle comfort dressed
in smoke boy calls out frustration aloneness too & sadness
he mourns their roasting flesh smell of worlds burning worlds
boy has been cursed to tour boy is a mixed feeling
warm with
love cold with unmatched silence
boy does continue like life on stormy nights he visits
depression
understands the language of a life torn apart boy sails on smoke
bursts into light & takes up the role of an echo boy is louder now
a ghost town capable of silence
Editor’s Note: boy echo was previously published in Barren Magazine.
Michael Akuchie is a Nigerian—based poet whose works have appeared on Barren Magazine, Euonia Review, Kalahari Review, African Writer and other literary spaces.
He is currently a university undergrad.
Contact him on Twitter @Michael_Akuchie.
