self portrait at twenty-two

by Adebayo Samuel Oluwaseun

redacted again. I find these days that I scour through pages of myself to find what i really am   i dig  within the ashes of what could have been   and you would wonder how many times l have been omitting myself when joy comes like a river   in the heart of this poem is my essence wrapped in tonight     in the eyes of the gods, I am the boy courting death tempers himself into a rod   melting  raining  and a break happens in the heavens which is to say  my body is a temple of iridescent desires  and I wait at the edges  skirting around  this  drop of myself I have been begging to open up for pleasure in the beginning of this poem.   redacted again.  at twenty-two    i am still lost   i still grapple for a shard of myself in hearsays   i still fall and that's okay because i would rather that than become a man because boys  after they become men  their name  becomes a lingering mass of memory  which is to say an aftertaste  which is to say they learn to say : I am a sin but I have learnt to say i am a joy to myself and that's okay too  the fire burns into the  memories again mother says It is alright but i fear because I cannot find myself anymore so i dig for my essence hidden in this poem and I find that it is scattered ash over an ocean  somewhere i painted an ocean into the image of a boy and that boy is me i find these days that i break because i have no place to find joy except inside a fragile body  it houses memories too, of my father teaching  me how to look deep within myself to see what the others sees  a fragment of my father's body integrating me into my mother  He kisses me and he grins and says i will be great.

Adebayo Samuel Oluwaseun is a Nigerian Writer, Poet, liberalist, expressionist and baby Engineer. He believes strongly in the study of the humanities and he likes to explore the human body and it's emotions when he writes. His works have been published on Brittle Paper, Kahlari Review, Fiction Niche magazine, Nantygreens magazine, and elsewhere. He can be reached on Twitter through the handle : @ imperialquills.