Sometimes I Hold Your Picture & Sing (for Pretty—Amarachi)

By Benard Nweke

there’s a heavy blockage

a barricading of the heart 

in the absence of your soft pillow of chest

& there’s no better way to frame a tale of love

& incompleteness than sprawl solitarily in a room

this way 

like a stream drained of waters 

like fingerlings denied of fins

like night sky divorced of terrifying darkened

or voluminous breasts drawn of milk

& because i’m open to drowning in your 

effervescent ocean of love

the way a child spreads arms wide

welcoming his homeward-walking mother

see why whenever i miss you 

i reach out for your picture in the pigeonhole gallery

hold it in the palm & mumble

‘if i could be where you are’

for one whose picture is caught by the tale of the two eyes 

is met by half.