​A Testament of Bloom

Tonight, when it gets to midnight, 
I will allow a scalpel kiss the throat

of my dream. Watch it bleed crimson 
into the cloud of my bedsheet. I would

see my childhood fantasies slithering 
through the pain & strain of adulthood.

Tonight, when the nightingale begins 
to sing. I would beg her to sing my

grief to slumber. Whisper sweet nonsense 
to the stenosis disturbing my cardiac

rhythm. I would tell her to tell momma 
that her son has become an amalgam

of sweetened melancholy & a thing too 
heavy for a flight with the wind. Oh!

Blessed One, sprinkle ethanol on my 
anxieties. & stuff this body with

tranquility. See how the taste of smile on 
my tongue depicts that of blood & I am

a bible verse on a dying atheist lips. Sour, 
too minute to satiate his disbelief at the

brink of reality. There's no data in dreamland 
to hotspot my memory off the stench of

nostalgia. My mother always say, swim. So 
I, clasp my winglike hands & plunge,

head first, in the pool of her supplications. 
Like the holy communion, it purges me clean.

I become a martyr for this religion.

---

Joshua Effiong [He] is a Nigerian writer and a lover of literature. His works has appeared in Eboquills, Kalahari Review & Shallow Tales Review. He is an author of a poetry chapbook Autopsy of Things Left Unnamed. When he is not writing, he is reading, watching movies and listening to music. An undergraduate of Science Laboratory Technology. He lives in Calabar, Cross River State, Nigeria. And here he writes from. You can find him on Instagram @josh.effiong and twitter @JoshEffiong.