Feyijimi James Fayowolé, Honorable mention for the 2024 Ogochukwu Ukwueze Prize for New Writers

A poem for my grief. Sad man holding cigarette.

On most Saturdays,

It does not rain on the roofs,

It rains on my face 

And I take my pen 

To write off my grief.

Life, they say, is a paradox

And the words dawned on me

When my father did not come home.

Yes, nothing worse has ever happened to me

Than the sea robbing me of my father.

Every night in my dreams, 

I see a portrait of a wrecked boat sinking

And my father’s face calling out to me, ‘Son, save me.’

I reach out my hands but they only slice through empty space.

Little did I know when the sea smiled

And the waves danced on that day

That my father had become like the air in a balloon.

That night, I waited at the doorstep,

Sitting and searching every passing soul with my eyes,

Hoping to catch the slightest glimpse of my father.

But no! He was not there. My heart swells.

Say this poem is a solitude. A way to purge my grief. 🔆


Feyijimi James Fayowolé is a young emerging poet from Ondo state in Nigeria. He is a keen lover of the literary world and spend most of his leisure period scribbling poems. He tweets @Feyijamees001.