In the beginning was a city built by its purple colours.
Glass-rich. Mirrors brought paradise to the streets.
Now, it’s stripped bare by gunfire it spits.
Peace, petaled by olive branches, is the debt we pay
to breathe. Fire is another language for ash.
Try ravaging memory and see how we
once entered spring through its own doors and flowers,
watching the gardens dream of summer,
a bloom like the lilies.
Last winter, with ice in its bosom, a man, dying,
planted life in the garden of his wife’s belly,
only to grow tufts all over the house.
It’s the war in Palestine I see on the TV screens,
Hope, like the tall buildings, collapses into
the grand speeches of nations.
I leave to live. I wear the wrong skin in the streets,
walk with life and return home, my hands
full of the corpses I did not touch.
See how I burn. See how I scrape my
tongue, teach it to scream let there be
light just to watch flames organise themselves.
Every word is an instruction depending
on how faithful your tongue is—like
how mine betrays me, delighting chaos.
Dear God, like a toddler, teach me the steps of abscission.
Chisom Okoronkwo is a Nigerian-Scottish writer and spoken word artist, and the founder of the Afro-Scottish Poetry Event. She is the recipient of the 2024 African Excellence Award from the University of Glasgow, where she earned an MLitt in Creative Writing (Distinction). Her work has appeared in Brittle Paper, Isele Magazine, Ake Review, Blue Marble Review, and Lunar Journal, among others. She is the winner of the 2023 Shuzia Journey of the Soul Poetry Contest, and has been shortlisted for the Isele Short Story Prize and the Glasgow Women’s Library Bold Types Competition, as well as longlisted for the Bournemouth Writing Prize and The Writers’ Prize.