Sitting on the staircase

By Abdulkareem Abdulkareem

For Ahmad Aisha

The moon here is a premise for good things
to come, we met the sunlight, but it left us here, 
we sit— our shoulders side by side— eyes on the 
firmament like two students receiving lectures 
from the stars. The taste of your discourse, more 
honey than granulated sugar. Your smile, a starry 
night sky. While you unfurl the fold of your 
discourse, I peek on you— my side view, a floral 
garden of lilies. What magic, the bird crooning
in my medulla sings your name in repetition. 
Let us begin like beads & join into a necklace,
Let us be a pair of maracas filling the air with the 
rhythm of love. My heart, a foot on your quicksand —
I lift an ankle & I sink more into you. I speak your 
name sometimes on my bare palms hoping a daffodil
would sprout. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t. Maybe 
it blooms & shapeshifts into the tendrils that attached 
me to loving you, maybe it will eventually flower out 
when you grant me entry into the nest that holds 
the blood-hued bird sitting somewhere up your rib-cage.

Abdulkareem Abdulkareem (Pānini) (he/him), Frontier III, is a Nigerian writer, he studies Linguistics at the University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria. He won the University of Ilorin SU writers competition (Poetry Category) 2022. In 2021, He was shortlisted for the top entries of the Nigerian Students Poetry Prize (NSPP). His works appear/forthcoming on POETRY magazine, Asterlit, Poetry Column-NND, Brittle Paper, Ice Floe Press, Claw and Blossom, FERAL, Rigorous, Second Chance lit, Olney, Salamander Ink, Kissing Dynamite, & elsewhere.