WONDERLANDS Chisom Okafor
I was born in a place for old men, for boys feasting their way backwards into time. The priest swiftly makes an incision from where he stoops to weave a certain birthmark; in secular seaculorum... I know boys trapped to birthmarks like seagulls to brown water I know boys turned silenced men, still sutured to the mark of the beast I know this, because here, you know forced silence is how best to live after birth: accept the wrong love in its untouchable learn to pick out its echo when it calls the love you seek does not belong in this place, it’s been broken and wears the segmented skin of centipedes. My skin, like each trickle of salt water makes for a sea of wonderments – lost love, broken hands, burning flesh. My body is a riverbank, flooded with wonderments. We face the milky way – newborns, at daybreak – to recite reminders to the shadows that make love to us: there are beasts in us too, as in every man.
Chisom Okafor lives and writes in Lagos State, Nigeria. His works have been published or are forthcoming in Praire Schooner, Brittle Paper, Expound, Kalahari Review and elsewhere. He is currently working on his debut chapbook.
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