Goodness Ayoola

Grieving with my friend on his lover’s demise

Like a cat’s eye in the dark
Two cigarettes glint in full glare
Between darken lips and crooked fingers

My friend's eyes are a furious fox’s
Each straight puff is punctuated with his lover's
Name

His face is a dog’s ears in despair

The cigarette man’s fluorescent lantern is a dull moon
Contouring the thick wisps
Into tiny phantom-hydras

The way he sucks long into the sticks is like
A man measuring the length of his frustration
Like it’s the world coming to an end his breath too

The cigarette man repeatedly answers him for the umpteenth time
It's Sunday’s night

The embers flicker out on the ground like a fire
Struggling to begin Like the way his lover’s eyes took a final shut at his
Tendril hands

I tell him: let’s go home
He asks: are you the angel of death?

The church-bell clangs in the distance