Internal Battle I Poem by Onyi Ogwumike

Should I rest on Night’s iris?
Being enveloped by her soul,
As those great wings of eyelids fold me into her dark shadow.
Dear Mistress,
Led me your cloak.
That I could close my eyes,
And that darkness that lays within my inner eye
And likewise my outer flesh
Would swallow me whole.
So my name would cease to run laps in the minds of men.
That it would cease to sit on their tongues.
That it would cease,
Almost as entirely as my being would.
I cease.
To exist, which is a burden hung heavy on my soul.
A burden full of pleasant miseries,
Lovingly in hate with myself.
So much so that I can’t stand to fathom how anyone possibly could.
Love me,
A command I once shouted into the clouds,
Sending my voice in great beams of lightning sharp woe.
Finally some god,
Perhaps mercifully sweet Venus,
Obliged to relieve my miseries.
Kissing my brow with carnation lips of bliss and adoration.
And thus bloomed a great flower of Hope in my soul.
Sending its roots deep into the infertile dry lands of my tarnished heart.
What stone of Fate that it perhaps had become lodged onto to prevent it from blowing away as all the others do,
Baffles me.
But then did I watch,
My mind spelling doom for the rare breed of beauty that had token up shelter in my anguished breath.
My spirit on edge,
Holding its tongue between two anxious fingers,
Lest I should erupt in premature jubilee,
And soon my flames
Be put out.
That Hope and Time should coexist in peace,
Is a debate that riddles the long nights of my internal battles.
Documentation of such battles,
Transcends my mortal abilities.
Still do I attempt.
To somehow find a word to capture my bittersweet beginnings and ends in its
Brave palms of titanium and might.
My heart beats slow,
Listen.
To its triumphant noises,
As it leaps through the night to his doorstep.
Sorrowful, envious, villainous
Past in hot pursuit,
Her flames lick at my Love’s feet.
Biting and nibbling.
Doth my ears deceive me or is she yelling something?
Poisonous truths I accept as my own
Does she throw at my Love,
Which weakens under her blows.
Strong laughs the Past,
Change cowers in the corner,
Love falls just feet from her destination.
The Stars watch, eyes agape,
Distraught at their nature to withdraw.
Cursing Morning’s iridescence as she approaches the crime scene,
And another Night ends.
My eyes open as my mind’s doth close,
Resting
To heal the scars of one and prepare for ones of yet another.