I wake up today and choose beauty     because

the body is the prosthesis     of the mind

this is a painting     of the tongue as magic

     this means     if I claim a thing

then I am it     ergo     I am everything the world

keeps away from me     I am the church light

burning the bleak of my heart    

Lord     so much gloom     should not fill a boy    

the body’s elasticity to suffering     will be its

     undoing     we absorb     until we become

absorbed     a cup filled with water     becomes

less cup     a body full of wreck     more trauma

than flesh     but today     I have chosen beauty

I scrape my skin     of ennui’s stubborn glue

if I can cover up my wounds     have I not been

     made beautiful?     surely     this     too

is reparation     if the mirror does not echo me

clean     I will pluck a shard     carve myself

until bloom     I will sing     blessed be all

the parts of me I hold     my voice     a hymn

inside a voice     fluttering with cherubs

bring all your broken     to come worship with

me     inside my religion of bone     I am building

an altar within my darkness     in penury

     I have learnt     the tunnel of suffering

has no end     we punch the surface

to let light in

Samuel A. Adeyemi is a Poetry Editor at Afro Literary Magazine. A Best of the Net Nominee and Pushcart Nominee, he is the winner of the Nigerian Students Poetry Prize 2021. His works have appeared—or are forthcoming—in Palette Poetry, Frontier Poetry, 580 Split, Strange Horizons, Agbowo, Brittle Paper, Jalada, and elsewhere.