boyying (v. 3)

     Adedayo Agarau

 

halleluyah, the boys cried from inside the church, & i was one of them.

centuries to come, a group of boys will pick five stones & bring down a bird

or burn a house or talk the demon out of their pockets. years ago, a packet of boys

went wild in a park & broke someone’s side mirror, a man forgetting how young & wild

he once was called the police. now that is the beauty of forgetting your own iniquities.

i tried to drown myself in my father’s bath-tub, made a jordan out of his inheritance.

this is because i got grief the size of a hand. watch the way it takes the shape of a fist.

i dreamt that something beat me out of sleep, & i wake up with a skin full of scars

a long line of amens made from cane-shapes. that morning, i broke the mirror.

i wrote a poem sometime & said that grief has no gender. but now i understand

that boy grief is the way the ground swallows a city all at once. why god created man

was because he was lonely. the purest grief is found in a lonely palm. god knew what

he did when he plucked eve out of a crumbling bone. i hit my head against the window glass

as a form of protest against creation. i hear the angels shiver, we didn’t beg to be angels. we

want to make mistakes & call it missed steps. we want to be children in someone’s house & wingless

unable to be everywhere. it’s 6.33 am the morning bird is knocking on my window, & my eyes

forsake the gift of darkness, the magic of unknowing. the morning takes me, into a new mouth

full of wrongdoings. again, my father says you are just a boy like you are just mis-born.