A LITTLE CONFESSION

Whenever I decide to write 

or whenever something decides to write through me, 

the goal like the footing of a mountain

had never, for once, changed—

To conceive something 

that can breathe without suffocation, 

through time and space, and thrive and 

flourish regardless of the season or age. 

Here’s a little confession for you 

and for you alone, I love you so much 

that if you die I’ll die too—  that’s pre-

confession and denuding the masquerade—

I am quite, you couldn’t have pictured this even

in your grandest fantasy, obsessed with eternity. 

Not the kind that makes you want to set 

out at dawn seeking death’s illusive head 

on a spike. 

My obsession for eternity 

is more of a healthy one, that even death,

though the shy type, can attest to it 

all you have to do is ask him, next time 

you stumble upon him downtown at a restaurant 

while on recess from his arduous heavenly task

of plucking souls like ripe mangoes with phantom sickles.

If whatever we do here truly echoes 

in eternity— 

like a voice suddenly hurled into a dark well 

or a loud scream flung across a deserted oblong 

corridor, then I want my eternal echoes

       —brace yourself for impact—

to be harmonics of all that’s bright, blue

brazen and beautiful— just like you.

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Abdulmueed Balogun Adewale is a black poet and pilgrim from the city of brown tenements. A Pushcart prize and BOTN Nominee, he was shortlisted for the 2024 Gerald Kraak Prize. His poems have been published in Boudin, The Oakland Arts Review, The Mid-Atlantic Review, Progenitor Art and Literary Journal, Zaum Magazine, Ember, Brittle Paper, The Westchester Review, Soundings East Magazine, Hawaii Pacific Review, Red Cedar Review and elsewhere. He tweets from @AbdmueedA