My Body Is a Metaphor For Grief – Poetry by Nigerian Writer, Chioma Vivian

For my little Tochi: Time is not Always a healer

Daylight falls  to dusk, whispering  the tales of us that have turned memories.

Its remains  faded  like dewdrops in the thirsty flowers’ stream

Or to say: a replica of dead petals left amid a flowery garden.

Behold! My body is a living metaphor

for grief planted into lines called verse.

My pages, a diary once with beauty, now littered.

Time is not always a healer,

nor does it  soothe  every ache,

nor mend every break.

Here, every hour is another chapter of pain;

a surgery blade through the bone marrow;

broken torso yanked from the sight of your sudden demise.

My body decimates at dawn awaiting dusk to decay.

Dusk, another eve to stare as the pieces of peace vacate my  bosom.

My body, an alien to the mirror that once called it by name.

And my mouth speaks pain with the same dialect it moans.

Scars of dead memories across my face and the palm that reads:

See, this body is a metaphor for charred memory.