Marshmallows

Saheed Sunday, Nigeria

in my bucket list, i found roots propping up into flowers; cessation mounting into songs; fire succeeding a blowtorch, but all i could think of is how to regurgitate my archaic sorrows into a sketch of euphoria. for once, believe me as a human and not as a poet. this is the aisle i hold up my body and named it after everything that is beautiful. & in this room of pink flames and pregnant lights, i watched a deadland evolve into a floweryard of garlanded marshmallows. i know you think i lived all my life as a cheat, but this is the only way i tuck my old sour life in — for confection, for sweet confection. in this poem, i’m a body reflecting myself into the results of an altered timeline, a mirror of the whole multiverse. here, i’m a body perfuming a caesura into the nakedness between this poem and me. this is how i start to give everything euphoric in me that hasn’t lived yet a name i could call on.

Saheed Sunday, NGP V, the author of Rewrite The Stars, is a Nigerian writer and a Hilltop Creative Arts Foundation member. He was the 1st runner-up for the Nigerian Prize for Teen Authors, 2021. He has been published or forthcoming in journals and magazines including Shrapnel magazine, Rough Cut Press, Temz Review and others