Stories From Young African Poets: The Grief And Poetry Of Agboola Tariq Adebola.

…i build this poem with lines broken, disjuncted
into meanings. like a brick house collapsing into
the atmosphere of the earth, my body disintegrated by
burdens that draw down the edges of my being…

As a young teen, I had written a few poems.

Although at that time, I wouldn’t call it to mean poetry, but rhymes. And I was so good at it. To talk about what influenced me to write poetry as it means to me today, is to talk about the loss of my sister.

I was a teenager still when I got to know grief personally. I would sit alone in my room reminiscing about the memories we shared & I would write poems that came right from the heart, unlike the rhymes I wrote, which I believe are more of intellect than expression.

Till now, I still find myself writing about her & I do not think there will be an end to it.

Portrait of A Boy in Love With Things Broken by Agboola Tariq Adebola.

Originally published in The Hellebore Press.

i find myself shattered flattered in front of a
mirror. every fragment of me phasing into
complexities– like an hourglass, broken, splintered
into shrapnels, into a substance so minute it defies
nomenclature. resists existence. escapes time.

i think myself a character; eyes, the milky way of
galaxies colliding, causing luminous beams that
breach anything unhurt. my heart, a darkness
only found in space, a vault of wrecked
[space/relation] _____ships.

i remember myself a child in my kindergarten
years. i remember the singing teddy bear & how i
found satisfaction in broken toys/ how beauty subsists in
things broken.

i build this poem with lines broken, disjuncted
into meanings. like a brick house collapsing into
the atmosphere of the earth, my body disintegrated by
burdens that draw down the edges of my being.

in brief moments i find peace in the nature of
things. the way the earth breaks to birth trees, how
a fruit breaks away from roots that bore it, how it
falls back into the deep of the earth to harvest growth.

what consists of being, if not an entirety of follicles
broken into existence?/ so i begin to breed pieces of myself & i
whisper into the spaces of a broken mirror—‘all that breaks is not chaos’.

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Hannah Omokafe Dennis

Hannah Omokafe Dennis Is A 24-year-old Journalist, Voice-Over artist and UNFPA Adolescent Sexual Reproductive Health Rights Advocate Living In Nigeria. She Currently Serves As A Community Manager In Konya Shamsrumi AndHas Some Of Her Written Works Published On Writer's Space Africa and audio stories on Genti media. She Enjoys Using Words And Her Voice To Tell Stories. She Tweets @Omokafe_forite.

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