silhouette
By Damilola Omotoyinbo
the world is a void that can’t get filled
even if it begins to consume itself. & life
loses the little meaning we have of it
as we begin to probe and poke. searching
for the things which in themselves are
without form. i hold my heart with a latch
hoping it won’t sever into more fragments
than i can fix. & if it would, may it become little
honey cubes beckoning the world for a feast. how
do we appease a heart eating itself from inside
out? we don’t know the history of the man
marred by the blob of his aches, married
to solitude. somedays, love sits on his porch.
on other days, his lover is lost in the woods. joy
starved. we don’t know the weight of our breathe
till it is trapped in a bag. & we wonder how
much weight ache a body can hold without
snapping. a silhouette dances in the
rain. beads jiggle on its waist. even the shadow
of a forlorn voyager seeks freedom. i am half
broken, half whole. folded in by these
walls. hasped by the loop of time and existence.
BIO:
Damilola Omotoyinbo (Frontier XIX) won the 2021 SprinNG poetry contest, she is a fellow of the Ebedi International Writers Residency and an Alumna of the SprinNG Writing Fellowship.
She got the 2022 Lolwe classes scholarship taken by Dami Ajayi and won Second place at 2022 PIN (Poets in Nigeria) Poetry Prize.
Damilola reads for Lerims and has work published/forthcoming at Brittle paper, Agbowó, NND–Poetry Column, The Nigerian Tribune Newspaper, Kalahari Review, Praxis etc. She is Damilola Omotoyinbo on FB, IG and Twitter.
the world is a void that can’t get filled
even if it begins to consume itself. & life
loses the little meaning we have of it
as we begin to probe and poke. searching
for the things which in themselves are
without form. i hold my heart with a latch
hoping it won’t sever into more fragments
than i can fix. & if it would, may it become little
honey cubes beckoning the world for a feast. how
do we appease a heart eating itself from inside
out? we don’t know the history of the man
marred by the blob of his aches, married
to solitude. somedays, love sits on his porch.
on other days, his lover is lost in the woods. joy
starved. we don’t know the weight of our breathe
till it is trapped in a bag. & we wonder how
much weight ache a body can hold without
snapping. a silhouette dances in the
rain. beads jiggle on its waist. even the shadow
of a forlorn voyager seeks freedom. i am half
broken, half whole. folded in by these
walls. hasped by the loop of time and existence.
BIO:
Damilola Omotoyinbo (Frontier XIX) won the 2021 SprinNG poetry contest, she is a fellow of the Ebedi International Writers Residency and an Alumna of the SprinNG Writing Fellowship.
She got the 2022 Lolwe classes scholarship taken by Dami Ajayi and won Second place at 2022 PIN (Poets in Nigeria) Poetry Prize.
Damilola reads for Lerims and has work published/forthcoming at Brittle paper, Agbowó, NND–Poetry Column, The Nigerian Tribune Newspaper, Kalahari Review, Praxis etc. She is Damilola Omotoyinbo on FB, IG and Twitter.
