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Endings | Stefn Sylvester Anyatonwu



POEM 134: ENDINGS

This is not how it ends
but how you wanted it.

I lived many lives and
I am still the same—

the same lone star hovering over
the same universe dark,

when the church call me
it is a name I do not recognize.

when my friends describe me
it is a me I do not know.

We are asked to to pray, 
or prey
on meals that make us purge
and sins that blesses my urge.

I am one copious lad
with a black blood
or so I am told,
I wouldn't know.

Some calls me by the skin
I did never knew I had
when as a baby
I crawled the land and skies.

Some calls me by the ascent
that comes with my speech.
Some laugh and scorn me
like I owe them a language rent,

what to do?
Look how my body dim in light,
a tear, a murmur
a hope that's no more.

What to do?
To let go, and not?
I am crushed beneath other ideologies
breathing air stuffed with suffocating philosophies,
crawling on skinned knees on gravels,
dreaming of endings and sighing at the dark spot
that stand in the way of light

What to do?
To end the sorrow of beginnings,
beginnings with endings
I know will be the same
same as my forebears
forbears who roamed same farmland
that would no fruit bear.

We end like this: all of us
walking in solitude, bearing our cross
walking a desert heart of dead bodies. 
With our cross
dotted lines we cross
across borders we dare not cross
across the dissatisfaction we dare not speak of
across dogmas we learn and dare not unlearn 
across things we acquire so quickly
and lose before we taste or see. 

Like bots
we are wired to walk this timeline
intentionally slow
until we crawl on the surprising shore 
of dark?
of lights?
We are not in control...
the gods are,
yet we would not unite or cross, crescent, star,
thought, philosophy, triangle, fork, rosary,
and give ourselves new names
and our diversity embrace
and our...our... the tags reject.

But, sometimes, we also end like rabbits
caught up in a den of lions
memorizing escape routes
that will take us no farther
from the fanged esophagus
of the fears that destroys us.

These times
we end in silence
maggots making their way into our bodies—
caskets and tears, 
or landmines or seas,
or hunger or sour beans
until we are translated from this timeline of madmen
to where we think we come from.

Don't talk about gods,
you're not welcome.
This is not how it ends
but how you wanted it.

#365DaysOfPoetry
#Pengician
#SSA

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