“I will talk like I remember you cradling my baby body.” — Linda Laderman
Tonight, my father is no longer dead. He’s alive & blooming like the cancer that claimed my brother’s life at twelve. He’s no longer wrapped in that silk shroud my mother bought with her last tears & pleas. He now floats in fluttering-linen-robes, singing alto among a choir of seraphim. “Son, there’s a soundtrack for every desolation—between Miles Davis and a Dirge sung by an angry wind—through an open window at midnight. The crack of grey in a widow’s hair, the sob that never made it past your spine, the sigh your mother stitched into your school shirt before she baptizes your head with psalm 121 on ambush road.” Tonight, I’ll pretend this lamentation is a new revelation. That these bruises are fresh & warm like the Ègúsí soup in Grandma’s clay pot, not a ragged wound I’ve nursed for more than twenty years. I’ll pretend loss is knocking on the fragile door of my soul for the first time. That this narrow, tear-soaked bed is a hammock beneath an almond tree & you’re the wind swaying me to that childhood shore of ecstasy. I’ll edit my grief. In the pain I call poems—I’ll change “hurt” to “ache,” “wept” to “wet,” “dead” to “distant.” Tonight, I’ll lie to myself again & say a bad page is better than a blank page. Even if my lies need ink & blood to breathe. I’ll bury my wounds in euphemisms, feed my griefs to metaphors. I’ll repeat clichés & call it poetry. I’ll pretend you walk in—not as a ghost, but as a man who never left. You pull up a chair, scratch your beard the way I do now & smile like you know I’ve been practicing in front of a mirror. I’ll pretend you speak—not in thunder, but in the hush between these fever-clustred-stanzas. Your voice hums in the creak of the fan, in the shiver of curtains, in the way I say God, but mean Father. I’ll build a monument of forced breath beneath your broken ribs, nest my head on your chest—the way this lonely wind does on your grave every summer night. I’ll pretend I still have siblings & friends to share in my sorrow, but your absence is the only inheritance I don’t have to split. I’ll remember how you said; ”men like us don’t die—we hide.” So when I look in the mirror, I don’t see me. I see you. Your father. & your father’s father. I’ll remember how you said; “men like us are never silenced—we keep our voices in the mouths of our sons.” & when I open my parched lips, I speak not in the dulcet voice my childhood crush wished her man would have, but in echoes—in parables, poems & broken prayers of you. Your father. & your father’s father. One more summer night & I won’t just lie, I’ll fly. Icarus. I won’t just pretend, I’ll ascend. I’ll deny myself the pleasure of rest. I won’t just lie by myself, as lonely as a cloud. I’ll levitate & fade into oblivion.
I’ll believe you came, stayed & whispered.
I’ll believe you came & stayed.
I’ll believe you came.
I’ll believe you.
I’ll believe.
I’ll.
I.
Olusegun Ajayi
Olusegun Ajayi is a Nigerian bilingual poet, a creative writer and Student Nurse who resides in Osogbo, Osun State. His poem "Savannah Serenade" appeared in the debut issue of Penned In Rage in January 2025. His works have appeared in Penned In Rage Literary Journal (UK), Ila Magazine (USA), Anthologies and elsewhere. Two of his poems have been translated to Spanish and published by Rincon Poetico, Columbia in premiere videos on their YouTube channel.
