The day breaks like all breakable things:
It was like that when Young Cub wrapped it up.
A boy opened his hands to pray, became a prayer instead.
Pandora’s box. Dad unsettles us in a grid of eights & fives.
One goes. The house is the house, still. & suddenly,
Prometheus has no hands to wipe his own tears.
There’s one more forever room with no occupant. Upon all our efforts grasses grow
at someone’s nightstand. Corked lager, unlit cigarette. Suddenly, it is cold.
Geometry has put our home at the center of the world: Grief’s Capitol. & suddenly
All the flowers are sick, we are not sure who to not save.
It is very cold this morning. The house calls
A roundtable. If we don’t eat, forgetting will be
Hard a thing. Which doesn’t mean that in the country
Of the bereaved we eat to forget.
We are mere observers, witnessing tradition: a long line
of trauma. Ah Lord please take our silence, send us back the soured prayer.
Let the soup be both the house & the arguments.
Fill a boy with longing.
Bless a mother to sleep well tonight.
Akpa Arinzechukwu is a twenty-four-year-old Nigerian genderqueer. They have work in Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Saraba, Transition, 20.35 Africa: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, The Southampton Review, New Contrast, Sou’wester, and elsewhere. They are the author of the poetry pamphlet, City Dwellers (Splash of Red).