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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