synonyms for tachycardia
are pebbles flung into the night
are a shower of leaves
falling off their branches
in a day full of wind.
here, within my aloneness
i pull two bread slices
into a magnetic field
with avocado pear for butter,
i make a vegetable sandwich
out of the void
like a god
on his creation morning.
i want to pretend i’m not
at the edge of ruin,
i want to look towards
the rising sun
& say into its face:
your money perish with you
for what is empathy
if not a further annihilation
of an already dead thing.
once in a telephone conversation
my father lowered his voice
and asked:
have you had lunch, son?
which is to say,
have you had your first
heart attack?
which is why i don’t reveal
the state of my heart
anymore
or you become enslaved
to a conquest of eyes
pleading to a false innocence
teary in their hypocrisy
(& to a shiver of voices
curious in pseudo pity).
there is a difference
between a racing heart
& one drowning from having
had too many horse-races
for one lifetime.
this is real.
knowledge of a foretelling is one thing,
surviving this foretelling is another.
i know & i swear i’m not
making things up.
i swear too, that these
are tears of fatigue
not of grief,
i just can’t bear too much reality.
Chisom Okafor is a Nigerian poet and clinical nutritionist. He has been shortlisted for the Brittle Paper Poetry Award, the Gerald Kraak Prize, the Frontier Award for New Poets, the Jack Grapes Poetry Prize, and the Stephen A. Dibiase Poetry Prize. His debut full length poetry manuscript, ‘Birthing’, was a finalist for the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets. He presently reads for Frontier Poetry and the Libretto Chapbook Series. You can always find him sipping copious amounts of decaffeinated coffee, while contemplating on suitable meal plans.
