Photo by Stefan Cosma on Unsplash
FALLING IN LOVE I live in streets where love flogs a stepchild into coma, for sinking his sleeping log of an overworked body into a bed rather than the freezing claws of the ground on a raining night. His body is a galloping beauty of weals formed from pain. His emotions are broken bones of nights without days. He hears the footsteps of his mother only when he closes his eyes. But they don’t talk for long because he must wake up before the morning mist. He lacks love from his father’s wife, they say. I say misconception lives inside this sentence. For her hands are a well of love, of stones and thorns.
And falling in love was walking into darkness with a blindfold.
Wishing his father’s silence is a Samaritan rather than the Pharisee walking past his robbed and injured traveler of a body on the road to Damascus. One day, a man living in his torn heart walked through the door dragging him along to a place where revenge grows on grasses not eaten but smoked They gather their pains, pour gin over them and smoke them unto the faces of a society that never cared.
Oghenevbede Eruteya is a Poet, Creative and Freelance Writer, Editor, and Medical Doctor. Has been published on several magazines including Kalahari Review amongst being shortlisted for Etisalat Flash Fiction Prize for Literature, 2016 and Tidbits Microfiction Award, 2019. His debut anthology of poems, FENCED BRAINS, is scheduled for release in 2020. A Public Health Advocate for Good Health seeking behaviour in Africa with Certifications from University of Washington and John Hopkins University School of Medicine. He writes on Instagram @vbedewrites_md.