At the garden gate, the roses lean,
Where silence grows and leaves are green.
A fence too short to truly hide—
Still, no one dares to step inside,
Where tidy paths have long been seen.
We honour roots we never chose,
Old shadows sewn in rows like prose.
They speak in tones we can’t translate
At the garden gate.
Retirement dreams now lose their thrill;
The veil of peace is never still.
A laugh would tickle out the pain,
But laughter’s taught to not remain.
We smile, but only for the sake
Of fences we forget to break
At the garden gate.
Daniel Naawenkangua Abukuri is a Ghanaian writer, poet, and literary critic. A finalist for the 2025 Adinkra Poetry Prize and twice shortlisted for the Goethe-Institut’s Young Creative Writing Workshop, he is the author of Petals of Love and Bluest Petal. His work has appeared in Lolwe, The Kalahari Review, Brittle Paper, Eunoia Review, Spillwords, and elsewhere. He is currently completing a poetry chapbook, All the Ways We Break, and two novels, In Her Defense and A Somber Coward. Daniel is a graduate of the University of Ghana, Legon. When not writing, he can be found watching anime, playing basketball, or cheering on the San Antonio Spurs.