Tuesday Poem by Gbenga Adesina

OPEN
(For K)

The things she says to me
I hide in stones.

Opal, sapphire, etchings like
pressed magnolia.
 

Eyes are the inner light of prophecy.
Let me be Orpheus. Sculpt O out of Oma
 

My woman is in the other room
translating Swahili into silence.
 

The alphabets curl like loss.
The vowels yodel, they open like the love of a child.
 

The things I say to her she keeps in olive
or wind, rain or the cities of my skin as they
 

open like the
love of a child.

____________

Gbenga Adesina is the author of acclaimed poetry chapbook, Painter of Water.