Poetry: Life and Colour

Life and then colour, it was blank without honours so much more as if we had withered long ago but still living and breathing. My story was three storey with a wooden floor and a balcony of diagonal carvings, there I sat all day watching the trucks that roll pass my gates, they headed somewhere my soul craved but desires were better a birds song, one you couldn't tell what the message was but a message was passed. I looked down and my tears nearly dropped, was hoping for bliss with all these diamonds and glitters but something was cold like in the fridge and it ran through my spines' ingredient. I had a birth mark I was told but there's too many scars I couldn't tell, I searched my whole body to find a link between the sweetest part of the past I've forgotten and the bitterly sugared days am living, I found none. 

Before I get too affectionate with pain and pay for the mistakes I've made, before the electric trains pass through this town, there is a bridge in my hometown from where I would see clearly the provocations of my heart and just underneath it, the river that takes it all away. I spent the better part of my life swimming these waters, some days I'd watch the colour of nature, thought it green but not it seemed. The colour of love I know, the colour of the sky often blue but life is a matte of many colours and the rainbo has it all. As a child, I had a pack of crayons to colour the future, the illustrations captured a rosy start but the rest was the stars' to decide. Like the tourists in this town I'll stare into the clouds, take pictures of young lads swimming, go fishing for the last time. 

The days of sprints are over for me but no more do I want to lock myself, depriving me of giving when I can't keep everything. The doctor was right when he said "there's no future in dwelling on the past". For so long I've asked for a soothing but my heart was grieved and there was no relief for the pain until the heart was healed. A few happy days juxtaposed with a healthy diet tweaked my colour, the impression was good. My storey no longer smelt like a hospital, it was home to cat and dog.


By Joshua Amile Ibrahim