dictionary:
the period of someone being away;
lack; deficiency; non-existence.
poet:
absence doesn’t connote
losing the presence of something.

today, you came, fatee, to the enigmatic
maw/ simmering my joy like a chemist
trying to defile the hardness of water.

today, you came to me, fatee,
with a melange
of nascent queries
and quaint words
cobbled to chisel my heart
so you could rupture, with your euphony,
the cactus cadaver of my
unblemished dream.

you marooned me, fatee, in this desert
a year ago,
juxtaposed between grief and suicide,
and, fatee, because i am an enchanting flower,
absence mutilated the cadence of the hope
nestled in the genealogy
of my thoughts.

today, as you came to me, fatee,
grief rummaged in my heart, and somehow,
beyond the clench of my wish,
the rippling flesh you sequestered from my heart

[your pale love]
spewed an acrostic bearing the depth of absence.

absence (the period of someone being away):
a heart-gripping grief for seeing an old lover.

absence (lack):
the existence of a knife that can’t slash a snake.

absence (deficiency):
a chirping of birds that can’t pollinate a flower.

absence (non-existence):
a mother hen repudiating her eggs.

absence is sighting a
sinister soul-mate that can’t hurt salve
a soul.

Yahuza Usman (Crawling Writer) is the secretary of Taraba State Hilltop Creative Arts Foundation.