A poem by RUTH FOLORUNSO.

 

In this room, I…
eat, sleep, think, watch
dream, wash, clean
sigh, cry, starve.

 

Right now, I am lying
supine on the bed
face towards the ceiling,
I am memorising the patterns on–

 

Right now, it is 3AM.
I am awake and full of light.
In this room where I live and die, day and night,
I might be the last person on Earth, the lone survivor
The wolf.

 

In this room

 

Sorry, I can’t sit still long enough to write.
I cannot leave this lonely cage I am trying to call home so I stay
awake into the long hours, staring at several screens,
transporting myself, being here and there (not here), omnipresent
and omniscient. Sometimes I feel like God.

 

I am alone, but I have my fingers on the Earth’s pulse.

Image courtesy of Ruth Folorunso.

Have you seen a man die?
I haven’t, because he was a child.
He dropped the gun and turned
too late, the officer’s gun was firing, had fired and the boy
was falling.
The officer moves, towards what was once boy/brother/son,
could have been father/husband/lover, all the could-haves in the world,
and when the officer looks down
When I look down
A child dies like a pig.

 

In this room I…
eat sleep think see see see
and never do.
I am impotent.
I have fingers on the Earth’s pulse and
Right now it’s stuttering with a desperate beat. But
I can never shake out these atrophied limbs and I
cannot move and my arms clutch uselessly against the door.
So I pace.
My emotions are rising.
I can see them now, pushing against walls that never bend.
I want to explode gloriously, heroically, in a surge of light.
Instead I will implode. A quiet death.
The death of an unnamed.

Image courtesy of Ruth Folorunso.

Featured image courtesy of Ruth Folorunso.