MICHAEL IMOSSAN
Rains falling into oblivion
At least eight people were killed and many others missing on March 28, 2022
When gunmen detonated a bomb on the tracks and opened fire on the
train linking the Capital Abuja with the northwestern city of Kaduna.
[Source: Aljazeera]
March hung suspendingly over my calendar,
with a noose around its neck & everything
began marching to their end.
I sat beside the ocean and watched as it swallowed
the sky in a communion of mouths.
The winds, sharp as rutile wrestled the sands into
submission. Here, even true peace is suspicious, we
must doubt it until it becomes war —it is the
only thing that runs in our blood. In the ocean
sprawled over my eyes, I saw three men arguing
the worth of ethnicity over freedom. In the
heat of their argument, I saw a country fall inside
water. I jumped into the ocean to save it & found
myself on a train. Inside the train, two men
calculated the distance between freedom and the
sun. I gathered my thoughts into wings & attempted
flight. Maybe Icarus sought freedom. outside, the
day ran faster than the train as if it were scared of
darkness. I wanted it to stop but the moon lodged
in-between night’s throat was an interlude of pain.
soon the train squealed to a halt. All the flowers
wilted —fell onto earth in shapes of soft bodies
splintered by a heartless shrapnel. Seeing this, I moved
to close the night but the bomb broke through &
found us: rains falling into oblivion.
Michael Imossan is a poet keen on expressing himself through all genres of literature. He is studying for an M.A in Linguistics in Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto. He is a winner of the Radical Arts Review Endless sky writing competition, 2022 (poetry). He won an honorable mention in the DiBiase poetry contest, 2022. He was named finalist for the Lumiere Review Poetry contest, 2022. He was longlisted for the Nigeriannewsdirect poetry prize 2021. He won the shuzia redemption poetry competition, 2021. He was shortlisted for the Shuzia prose competition, 2021. He has been interviewed by The Daily Trust Newspapers. His works are forthcoming from: Brittle Paper, Radical Arts Review, Corporeal, The Walled City Journal, Shallow Tales Review, Olney Magazine, Salamander Ink and elsewhere. Tweet him via: @michael_Imossan.