honey & lime

First portrait of me as Adedayo

Let's assume the body is an estrangement

       a beach house washed up in a sea the tender waves calling calling calling

Let's assume the body is a little flower praying for the sun pleading to be left alone in the wind alone

       with the stars in a night sky alone with the grief trapped in the ship of its own sea

Let's assume the body is a departure

       i dream of my grandmother's coffin, the golden handle and undertakers dancing her into oblivion

her dead hands twitch ocean eyes in my father's parlour

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erasure: the body is not a property

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I present myself holy / and broken / cast deep into the depth of my wounds / take me into your mouth give me the colony of my desolation / i just want to be a coloured boy in the dark / i just want to dance beneath a campaign of moon and wind / i just want my father to cry back into my hands (or vice versa) / let there be a city / let god be known / this body, dead with bones, shall rise & in the lifting / my grandmother shall rise to sing me back to sleep

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amen.