Calm my nerves with a sweet ode, fabric for beauty,
If you can sew words like a seamstress with a Midas touch.
This is me, son of the sun, calling on my river, to show me
How the eyes could see the self and fall out of love.
Even a tongue that kills the ego could not bring my pulchritude
To the knees—to bend is not my will.
I grew to make the world a mirror, but with a child’s touch
On his glass skin, the world breaks into spiteful shards.
Or do I have to drink my blood from these cuts
To show you how to help me heal?
Torn books I read on your faces—I cannot see
Where love was written, not even where a mirror is drawn
To see myself. Could the world be a shattered glass,
Severing fingers, learning to adorn our faces whenever we reflect?
These demons tried to grip me by my arms, to shake me,
To wake me up to their dark ambience and misty climate
And tell me to forgo my starry, solitary nights
Where the remarkable moments lurk behind my door,
Even your knocks are rhythmic to my ears,
And with your callings, I make music of solace.
The moon guides me to the day ahead,
Not a teetotaler’s sober words.
Even my bottle of gin reveals my layers to me
Than a soothsayer could, but this nose is a betrayer too,
So, I cannot smell the filth brought to me in a gift box.
So, when you find me at the river, at the end
Of everything you call life, believe me,
I am beginning another life at the bottom
Of this water telling me to unearth more layers of me.
Deep inside, my bed awaits me. I need to rest,
To place my hands on my chest, with deep breaths
That calm the tide, and thank the sun, my mother, for saving me.
Tukur Ridwan (He/Him) writes from Lagos, Nigeria. Author of A Boy’s Tears on Earth’s Tongue (Authorpedia, 2019) and The Forgiveness Series (Ghost City Press, 2022), he won the Brigitte Poirson Monthly Poetry Contest (March 2018). His poems were shortlisted in the Bridgette James Poetry Competition (2025), the Eriata Oribhabor Poetry Prize (2020), and published in Afrocritik, Kelp Journal, ArtisansQuill, Kalahari Review, Cordite Review, and elsewhere. He loves black tea, sometimes coffee. Twitter/IG @Oreal2kur