There are always holes in the blessing
we fail to account for.

In that warm harmattan, my grandma paid the pallbearers
one thousand five naira to change

the zinc roof. All through the rainy season,
The roof leaked. We collected the water with little bowls

from the kitchen. Nothing is promised—
not even the advent of another flood. God is present,

so is his history. In my diary, I put two brackets across
the word grief. A coat to keep it warm.

In the dream, I dig the dirt where a dog just fetched
a rabbit. I dig not for meat, but for the fur

of something alive. The world wasn’t ending
but I was alone with myself, in myself, outside myself.

I was a boy. I was a blue stream, I was a bird
with a scar on its beak.

In that harmattan, my grandfather went to bed, a man.
The next day, he woke up on the edge of the river

where the dead wait for the living.
I did not cry. But I learned that tears too had legs.

Eyes have history.
Years later, my grandma stood on the edge of that same river.

Not breathing, not singing, not even calling my name.
Which means I cried & the river swallowed my tears.

Which means I cried & my eyes gave away their own history.

I am sitting on a porch in a small town in America.

The grapes are ripe.
I have a kitchen knife & a hunger that sharpens itself.  

In my mind, the skeletons of the past are restless.
I have no tune. I have exhausted my lullabies.

I swear to hold the lamp at the end
of the tunnel. I would walk along the prairie
at midnight as the sky falls
if it means leaving the city that haunts
everyone who wears the hue of my skin.
I promise to write to Lucia
from my past. I promise to wait for her
in the future. At the mailing room,
I search the handwriting of my friends.
I have given up on sainthood, on priesthood.
In America, I slept inside the body
of a painter. The next morning, the sunlight  
from the window nudged us awake.
& it was not a premonition.
Even the stars nestled in my eyes are flying
to strange lands. The beatbox stops working
just before I made it to the mountains.
I will carry a camera with me into the haze
to capture the voices of men
walking with a song curled around their necks.
Nothing is going to change. Not my voice,
not the glint of dirge that spills from it.
I will build an ark, name it after Lucia.
I will tend a garden, invite my griefs to sit
amongst the green of God’s work.
I will take my gods to the river. I won’t drown
them. I will show them the vanity of thirst.
I will stretch my hand out in the haze.
I will do this despite of, in spite of, the ache.
I swear to hold a lamp at the end of the tunnel.
& I promise to sing a song while at it.

I came in full, brimming with the names of my mothers
and their mothers

and their mothers’ mothers.

Here, the hymns climb up my skin, down my sleeve,
straight into my palms. Last summer, my lover held my hands

& said something about dandelions. That same summer,
the dandelions grew so wild. Every dawn,

We saw God hold sickles to them. Grey, the color
beneath my passion. The forests of my desire

grow wild. Inside it, deer lead their cubs to a stream.
See, I know the ceremony of desire —

the carol of a hunger only the body
can fathom. Every night, I go to bed naked as a truth.

I walk barefoot in my dreams. Under my feet, dry leaves whisper
my traditional name. Chukwuemeka. Chukwuemeka.

In one origin story, a bird picks up a stone
and built a temple out of it. It doesn’t end there.

In another origin story, a boy picks up a bird
and invented music out of it

and the world becomes one long song.
Do you understand what I am saying?.

In our own origin story, I am in a painting with my lover.
In the background, there is a blue sky, a white cat, a flute,

and a dove perched on my lover’s shoulder—
its beak brimming with the songs of our mothers, their mothers

and their mothers' mothers.