My Body is on Hiatus

By Jonathan Ukah

Last night I was thunderstruck,

floored, my body went on hiatus

unseen, unknown, burning in peace,

a piece of calcium coal with fuel,

I cried that nothing

would return me to this earth,

seed me back to life;

I was a pack of putrid ashes,

of flying debris, light, sterile.

The fire left me sterile,

Flicking flies, grazing greens,

Floundering and confounded,

stagnates, delves into stillness,

and nothing is but what should not be.

I slipped into silence,

This small envelope of invisibility,

awaiting postage to the other side,

or the gloating pyre,

where no more hurt was possible.

I knew that this gradual ache,

eating me up, body and bone,

would char me to ashes,

like combustion, explosion

and the clock of my final hour

would quietly tick away, detonate.

I reach out for the stranded straw,

clutching at the wickerwork,

A thread of hope slipped into my edgy fingers,

a glittering flare of solar air,

loitering into this rotten wood.

There was a gathering of new flares,

like a little pool of water,

oasis of hope streaking into a body,

igniting it into life, quickening it

back into existence, into action.

I asked the sun to bring up my body

from the rubble of the hereafter,

where my life awaited interment,

my spirit in a torn leather jacket,

where I had only seconds before rebirth.