Poetry by Michael Inioluwa Oladele

​YOU.


Open your eyes. See you.
Look at the flaws
The cracks in your skin
The tears that flow in your veins.
Look at the darkness in the center of your sight.
And see you.
See you in the flaws
See you in the beauty
See you in the desired change
See you in the fantastic future
It is you
It has always been you
It will forever be you.




MOTHER MARRIED A DRAGON.
 
the day after tomorrow
I will write my will.
give away my glasses, my books and my blue socks.
I will say my last prayer
and then visit father
and I will ask how mother died.
 
I will see fire in his eyes
I am waiting for ice
that will melt into water
and become tears
rolling down to temper his heart
but my father is a dragon'
there is no water in his veins.
he will spread his wings
and spit fire, roaring like a broken spirit
roaring of how mother needed to learn submission,
of how his father taught his hardness,
firmness,
and manliness.
of how mother was rude and how he bought chains
for the woman who gave birth to me.
 
'it is not my fault,' he will say
'every slave has to learn respect.'
I will swallow hard
swallow the bitter truth
that my mother was a slave to the man she married
and all he saw in her was a pleasure house;
she was a hotel room
one he could run to when hard.
 
father will roar and roar
I am about to cry.
oceans are swelling in my stomach.
I am trying to be a man
I am making my father's mistake.
and then the dragon opens his mouth
I see fire pouring out.
quickly,
I run into my stomach.
 
I am not the son of my father.

Michael Inioluwa Oladele is a writer, historian, and blogger. He writes fiction majorly but dabbles into creative nonfiction and poetry. He has been writing since his fingers could grab the pen. He was shortlisted for the Abuja Literary Society contest in 2017 and the Etisalat Short Story Prize in 2015. He is the president of Creative Writers Niche, a writing club based in Obafemi Awolowo University with members all across Nigeria. He has been published on Brittle Paper, African Writer, Tuck Magazine, WRR, and many other literary sites. He likes glasses and natural hair.

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