River stones by Abdulkareem Abdulkareem

CW: Loss, grief, self harm

After Rock me, Mercy– Yusef Komunyakaa

We stand on our toes

twirling to the sounds

of the waves. The river

stones are watching. A crab

crawled past us watching us

sing. Guardian angels, do not

remind us what it feels like to

be grief-stricken. We do not

want to ferry grief with a paper

boat. We sutured the opening

in our body caused by grief.

And when grief tries to enter

again, we’ll brittle the tower

of its body into swabs, into

shards. Our body, a sacrament

& we stamp on grief, our

legs worn inside a shoe

with graphene soles

as we crush this

grief with a

dance.

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Abdulkareem Abdulkareem (he/him) is a Nigerian writer, linguist, he studies Linguistics at the University of Ilorin, Ilorin, Nigeria. His works have appeared/forthcoming on ARTmosterrific, Kalahari Review, Shallow Tales Review, Nnoko stories, Nanty greens, Ice Floe, Rigorous, Second Chance lit, Olney magazine, Ninshar.art, window facing windows review elsewhere. He tweets @panini500bc