Anuoluwa Ngozi | Love Is the Bedfellow of Faith

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. [Hebrews 11:1 NIV]

After Conan Gray’s Fainted Love

Two AM, asphalt blurs beneath our wheels
Wuse is a ghost town, a neon ghosts dancing with the night.

You whisper those three words
I love you

I tell you that love is a flower that must bloom without thorn choking it to an early cruel death
But you say it again
I smile back and tell you

Keep saying it, maybe one day those words
would bloom in the garden of our hearts,
like wildflowers in the valley of the forsaken

But tonight, under the streetlamp’s eerie glow, love is a flickering candle in the dark, next to faith’s dying embers.

Albatross

I am numb and greatly bruised [deadly cold and completely worn out]; I groan because of the disquiet and moaning of my heart. Lord, all my desire is before You; And my sighing is not hidden from You. [Psalms 38:8-9 AMP]

Numbness is a kind of memory
Pain is the mother that ricochet
Destiny writhes at the cold hands of death
If laughter was meant to haunt, this is the hauntiest of melodies
My mother says poetry is a home
That one escapes to
I say it’s a prison
Built with words
Bar for Bar
The fury of heaven sees
A lone child on rugged roads
And ask him if his soul was made of stone
I say his soul is made from blood turning into rosewater
Our cloud will know a remembrance
When the valley below was made of estuaries of saltwater
Until they are swallowed up
Water for water, the death of rivers—my eyes

Ngozi (He/They/Them) is a Nonbinary writer living in the slums of Abuja, Nigeria. A professional troublemaker and bookish baddie. When not haunted by stories, Ngozi daydreams about brighter days. Find them on X (Twitter) @WrittenbyNgozi