Immortality
Chukwuebuka Onyishi
i want you to hold my arms gently, not because i don't know the wonders of god dwelling in me, or the difference between death and resurrection, or the thirst of an outbreak, hold me, not because i do not understand the tiger's mouth is still full of dead history, not because i do not believe in my own lights, but because whatever was lost is still lost and i seek to find them. & i want you to see the distance between us —to know all the stormy leaves in this cathedral shall slowly fade. all the petrels i have dreamed of climbing the sky with grace, are now more blood-thirsty than my wounds watering the house of my animal fulfillment. know the wreckages gathering us shadow bones of distant gazelles, what the road holds at every junction. let the trees teach me that growth requires enough patience. In this tunnel of holy ghost fire, there are millions of dead demons. sometimes, i pray to god with burdens i know he would never erase. somewhere in the middle of the dark, i am singing very loud with beasts and powers of darkness, awaiting the angels of rain at the sea of pure life transits, where nothing fades but death after death, and withered dreams traversing into newness that shame cemetery tides. the snow gently covers our feet, all over like mahogany ants. i have no regrets in wholly praising the flowers that drove my chainsaws into ashes. all my loneliness is gone, and the new rain has come. because whatever we know that is lost can still be found, here —whete immortality is a God of wonder.
Onyishi Chukwuebuka Freedom (he/him), is of Igbo descent and a graduate of English and Literary Studies, University of Nigeria, Nsukka. Editor Penned in Rage, Publicity Secretary Muse No. 51, Essayist, Music Enthusiast, Runner-up (2025) Bridgette James Poetry Competition, Winner (2025) COAL NG (Coalition of African Literature) in partnership with the University of Leicester’s Avoidable Deaths Network and the SEVHAGE Literary and Development Initiative. His works have appeared in or are forthcoming from, amongst other places, Eye To The Telescope: (non)binaries, Harrow House, Northern Writers Forum, The Port Harcourt Literary Review, Wherein The World, The Biochar, Strange Quark Press, The Nine Muses Review, Ojuju Magazine, Poets in Nigeria Initiative, EveryBody Magazine, The Muse Journal, and Hidden Peek Press artist spotlight.
