Noun, at Rest & in Motion

By Nnadi Samuel

such is my flowery adjective 

scissored wrong.

                               jagged morphemes:

I chop you out from them, to tough citations.

for proof, I chase scriptures into your vast portrait.

your lids of equal signs, housing round slogans—like they were motivation enough to 

live.

I leap from this adjective.

the thought, a proper noun in motion:

"where boy + rope = a soon to be breathless body."

Perception is suicide in arithmetic.

grief—a brief determinant in the equation that sums to joy.

happiness is a natural but. a fine contradiction running into space.

the void between rise & sunset, day & midday, anti and post meridian.

I sculpt you in my own time.

for proof, I drive nuts into plywood, 

lay you down. noun at rest: 

"where boy + sleep = Eternity"

Here, my thoughts synonymous to a dumpster zipping your odd body & sieving the even 

details.

upturned, you lie vacant as a space in the human race.

I leap from this emptiness.

at first blab, I speak grief too well for someone of my stature.

my room, which I fill before my body wears the raw version of itself.

raw being volatile, numb 

                                           to vanishing.

think of me as a bound morpheme, sticky to my root cause if perception was phonics.

sound, traveling to hug void. sorrow left in its trail.

I crave this wandering of a boy on a heartless wind.

think of me as God's palm stretching to limit.

all turbulence, here & gone.

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Nnadi Samuel (he/him) is a Black writer & graduate of English & literature from the University of Benin. He reads for U-Right Magazine.