For the Spinal Cord of My Anatomy, I Pray You Grow

I calligraphed the letters of my heart in the sky,
and I searched for a ladder that would elevate it
to the spacious parlour owned by hope for condensation.

The sun emerged and disbarred its rays,
and the moon and its stars bloomed and faded
for a good thirty days, deprived of offering my heart
the luck to be hoisted to an atmosphere where rain
shall, if well formulated, moisten it with dewdrops of sheer elation.

My heart became a body of thoughts
painting its miseries on waters, on flowers, on any flora and fauna,
and on the surfaces of paths that lead to the light of my arts,
whose head was swollen by the alphabets of my heart.
Because he loved to see my heart blooming, he led me to you—you
that knew what it feels to be a brother, what it pays to be a whole universe,
and how it takes to collude with resources to lift my heart
to the dreamed land—a place where happiness awaited me
in its full size—a size that outgrew my father’s body.

Say, if not for your stairs that simplified everything for this journey,
what would be the fate of the suns and the moons
swallowed by the fragrance of my heart?
What of my light, would darkness consume him?
and if darkness imbibed us into its depth,
what would I cry out to the pens that let me
back to their tips for a year to attain Drakensberg’s peak?

Behold!
I may not be the God who answers prayers,
but even with that, I will never run away from God.
I will let go, but not my hands. My tongue
shall continue, like the Nile, to overflow with desires,
requesting Him to let you grow in mind, shine in light, bloom in love,
and be the Abuja of creativity in our world.