Equal Are You, With Thresholds Poem by Emmanuel Ayeni

Equal are you death with birth two conspirators leaning on the edges of my breath
I came no I was brought no I was poured into a room already waiting for my cry
washed before I knew my name wrapped before I knew my skin
was I ever mine or only a tenant in borrowed lungs

and you at the other end big silent head rehearsing my stillness
will you wash me too or only erase the warmth I called living
tell me is helplessness your signature or my reflection at both doors

one unwraps me into noise the other folds me into a silence so complete
even grief removes its shoes before entering
at B I was absence daring to become possibility
at D will I be possibility dissolving back into unnamed

they say I came empty they say I shall return empty
but who measured emptiness around a pulse still learning its rhythm
who declared void before my shadow had length

between these two equal thresholds I stutter as an unfinished sentence
grammar of breath breaking its own rules
a dagger of yes hidden inside every trembling doubt
a light in the thumb of choices I pretended were small

if both gates strip me naked why does one feel like arrival
and the other like disappearance
or is it I who never understood the mirror
arguing with itself inside my chest