By Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi
Thanks to the clouds on fire, the burning sunset,
and every diminishing as beautiful as time.
Thanks to the moments that are not yours,
the soft part of the world you are in
when you tiptoe to your mother’s room,
the unending seconds until you hear her snore
because the lost lyrics of the living
will always escape through the mouth.
Thanks to the quietness she drew from the well of nights
and bottled for you by dawn—for the lilacs,
the roses, and the thorns blooming in your mouth.
We pocket the heart until we know what to do with it.
Nature introduces spring to us like visitors.
Living and leaving, we multitask at our best.
When you get home, stare around like it’s another man’s.
Like this can be here, like that can be beautiful.
Cigar this life and light it with the sun.
Breathe this poem in. Own a spot on a cliff or an edge
or somewhere that can carry a stamp of your body.
Become. Open a book and see this trapped time
I left for you to live all over.
Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi
Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi is a Nigerian poet and essayist. A winner of the 2025 Rehumanize International Contest and SEARCH Magazine’s Poetry Contest, his work appears in POETRY, Oxford American, The Hinternet, Strange Horizons, Blue Earth Review, and elsewhere.
He is an Associate Editor at The Hinternet and and a Poetry Editor at Spare Parts Lits. Currently in his clinical year as a veterinary medicine student, he brings a keen interest in the intersections of science, language, and care to his writing.
His poems search for tenderness within rupture, and for wonder in the everyday textures of living.
