2 Poems
Olabimpe Adedamola
Olabimpe Adedamola (they/she) writes poetry, essays and occasionally, fiction. They think white bread is one of humanity's greatest inventions and have earphones in most of the time. They have works published and forthcoming in Rattle Magazine, Ngiga Review, Sub-Saharan Magazine, Chantarelle's Notebook and others. You can find them on Instagram @borednigeriangirl and on Twitter @lilbrowneyedfae.
For the House with the Crumbling Pink & Brown Paint.
To the house that watched puberty fold itself
into the deepness of my voice & the softening of my body. To the house that took my blood each time my mother spilled it.
That muffled the sounds of wood breaking flesh.
Flesh splitting flesh. The weaker giving way
under the force of the stronger. Words splitting confidence. To the house that swallowed my wish for death
& watched me wake again & again. To the house that saw the birth of my lust & desire
& the men who planted it in me. To the house that stood testament to my first loss of god,
faith leaving me in thin red lines drawn by a misery-riddled teenager. To the house I lost myself in. Found myself in.
Broke apart in. Travelled the planes through little green pills in.
Built tall walls in. Leaving you behind has not healed me.
A song lyric, a line from a poem, a scene from a movie
& I am back in your faded walls. Being a child. Being impure.
Being terrified. Being alive in the most lifeless way.
Finding Love In All Of The Wrong Places
in a woman's arms,
in the sea between her thighs.
in the sleek skin of a sea-green pill,
in the swallowing that offers rest,
that offers the ability to leave my body behind.
in a man's mouth,
in the pressure of his hands on the back of my head,
in the way he moans the name he thinks is mine.
in the coldness of metal,
in the burning feeling of the edge kissing my flesh.
in the invisible hairs on the invisible arms of my mother's invisible god,
in the way this god's love is brutal,
cruel,
my blood buying my redemption.
my kind of love is a constant breaking
of bones,
a constant music of compromise and
I keep
finding love in places that only know how to
devour light.
