love is an obsession I carry like a second skin. when you look at me like that, my darling, the sky shrinks to the whisper between our tongues. I become a map of small catastrophes, stuttering to the thoughts I have of you, I get stuck visiting landmarks named with your breath, My feelings tense like paper and flame Cause I only remember how to burn towards you. I am nothing in my soul if not obsessive clingy like a tide that’s drawn to the sea. yearning, a quiet hunger turning into something holy. I wear your absence like a guide and learn its shape by memory. Love here is excavation cause I would dig endlessly until your name is the only thing left. The ruins like verses written with our bodies. Please stay, and I will make a monument from the ruin of myself. Labeled in pages like this ready to be published.

We were taught borders Barriers… before they taught us how to listen. Lines on maps, lines on skin, lines drawn quietly between us and them. But poetry, was the first place I watched a stranger become familiar. A line written drafted here.. could reach a heart there. A metaphor whispered in Spanish could bloom inside a mouth that had never even tasted the language. This is how bridges are built not from steel but from bleeding on paper. Maybe peace is a poem written by someone I will never meet somewhere across the ocean. Someone who grew up praying differently than I do, speaking a language my mouth cannot shape. And yet when I read their words I stop. Because somehow their grief looks exactly like mine. The same longing to belong somewhere without having to explain yourself. It makes me wonder how many walls we built simply because we never stopped long enough to listen. Poetry does that. It makes strangers recognize each other. A line becomes a hand reaching across distance. A stanza becomes a small bridge over the things we were told should divide us. And for a moment the world feels less like separate islands and more like people standing on the same fragile ground trying to understand each other. And maybe that’s where peace begins. Not with speeches. But with one person saying This is what it feels like to be me. And somewhere else another person whispering back, I understand you perfectly.

We Are the Poem I showed up with only my words. No medals, no applause - just hands that knew the rhythm of giving, and a heart that listens before it speaks. We built hope from scratch - written on school walls, painted on tired benches, folded into care packages for girls told they weren’t enough. I wasn’t paid, but I was paid attention. And that’s something. To watch silence bloom into songs because we dared to speak. We wrote banners, not just poems. Planted joy in broken places. Held up mirrors for others until they could see themselves again. This is the power of words - when shared, not shouted. When written in sweat and service. When used not just to protest, but to plant, to patch, to piece lives back together. We are artists, volunteers, voices. We are the poem.

I have no vivid memory of ever hugging you, D. But yesterday, after our phone conversation, something about your last response felt like frail arms, stretched, and a warm body reaching to shield me, as if to say this is what an embrace feels like, Táyélolú. & suddenly, I'm torn between immersing myself in this strangeness and allowing my body to become a conductor for this shock, or leaving this as it is—another bland feeling, a hot cup of coffee that always seems to scald my tongue. Is this what it means to swallow the saliva of closure & yet, watch your throat struggle at dissecting its accent Here I am, beating heart, stubborn body, and tired soul, trying to grapple with the reality that some things can't be folded into metaphors and loving a man is a poem filled with them, that in some delicacies, salt can be sweet, and tears can be everything but a plea of salvation, a flag soaked in blood.

THE BLIND SEES A GOD I may be blind! Blind to the colors of the rainbow, Blind to the light painted after the rain Yet I feel the warmth, I feel the promise, I feel hope whispering beyond the map of my mind. Born into a world that carves dogma upon the soul, They say, “Choose!” But no man has ever chosen freely. They thrust upon me a foreign savior, A savior not of my blood, not of my flesh And yet I am told to kneel. Oh, why must the savior wear another shade? Why must the God of others eclipse the gods of our rivers, Our lakes, our forests, our ancestors? Who tended the roots of the apple tree? Who harvested the aidan fruit? The essence, the soul, the life of the tree Lies in the root, lies in the soil, lies in the blood. And yet we bow to foreign fruit, Plucked by hands that never sowed our seed. The blind seek a god! And they find themselves praying to strangers The God of Jews and of Israel! Why not the spirits of our waters? Why not the deities of our land? Why not the ancestors who shaped the first dawn? I may be blind But there is peace in my void. I am free from the opium That drives the masses to destroy each other In the name of hollow faiths, In the name of doctrines imposed to cage the mind. They taught me Akan, Hausa, Ewe, Gonja, and Ga, Yet my inner map knows one face The first human, dark-skinned, A Homo habilis, The progenitor of our song, our struggle, our story. The blind see a god! And I speak of my visions, yet they call them myth, The tales of our soil dismissed, While the stories of the white fathers Are etched in gold, declared holy. The blind see a god! And the African child sings aloud at the sight of white, For they have been taught These are the colors of God. These are the colors of heaven. I may be blind! But I ask am I free From the sins of perception?

She read between lines, Deciphering the emotions left inside. She writes just the same, to speak To those who scavenge through books, to live, to complete. For so long in this line of work, She started living in a blurred font, Expecting others to be on guard and watch sharp. She never turned off writing, So she wrote in metaphors, puns and thousands of questions But her loved ones couldn't understand her words, so they displaced her written love. She hid her tears and nerves in between quirky lines and downward verse, She cussed and trapped her pain within the chapters of her written cage, Her glossy eyes hidden by her beautiful lies told on stage. Living by an exchange, her tears for inspiring sayings, Her love given to feed a heart that's swaying Her hurt traded to protect their peace from fading . She did so without a care in the world, Just so others like her could continue, to see the beauty between pages, To hear voices only they can recognise. Concealed from the regular eyes Where their emotions can run free and never die In their paradise free from any goodbyes, Of themselves, even the little ones trapped within these lines.

MEET ME IN A POEM BY DEBORAH USAK How do we simply lay weapons down in syllables, When your anger breathes heavy without learning how to kill, Or when your tongue grows tired of choosing sides. How do you simply get to know I was raised on borders. Invisible fences stitched into conversations like “us” and “them” passed down like heirlooms nobody questioned. So when you said, "Let's meet” It sounded like a war drum in a room full of silence. Peace was never found in textbooks, So this missiles you throw at me looks very much like the day I wrote my first poem, A feeling I never seem to forget like I was crossing a river barefoot— unsure if the current would carry me or cleanse me. On the other side, I still found you, Not as “the other,” not as a stranger wrapped in unfamiliar skin, but as a story that sounded too much like mine Hard to ignore yet easy to be put aside, I admire the way you kiss me in metaphors, because your metaphors are like your alliterations, Too trusting enough, that they do not ask for passports. I remember the day you called her my pain, And yes, even if she was a house with no windows. I still called her mine, a room that echoed too loudly. And somewhere between her darkness and my noise, We finished you with just eyes and hands, Tell me— When did we start believing that language was meant to divide? When words have always been bridges, soft-spoken architects and contractors stretching themselves over rivers of misunderstanding. I have seen poems hold hands where people would not. I have watched verses sit between enemies and pray in rhymes, but they never sharpen their truth into a blade.” Come— Meet me in a country where bridges burn but are still walked upon, where we wear difference like fragile glass, careful not to cut each other with names, tribes, beliefs, histories— yet we still bleed. “Let me make a window out of this.” So we can see each other clearly, without the distortion of fear. Make Peace a relative, not arriving with sirens or signatures on paper. A treaty where we recite the same poem, But this poem never recognizes us, We have lived in this story of someone else's truth, So if you meet me halfway, I will meet you in a poem. One that knows what it means to hold and not to fight.

Across rivers of identities,  through valleys of names,   over borders and chasms carved by war    be the one who journeys into the heart;     the last borderless kingdom,      where in a stranger’s voice       you hear your brothers call.   Blessed are those who heed this call,    and wield hope with their being,     transforming wastelands into wonderlands.      Their heartprints are a wild, joyful thing. When Babel fell,  stone by crumbled stone   the true survivors:    those who dared     to learn a tongue not their own,      to find a new word for love. There will always be another crumbling,  another schism   in the work of living    that’s the way of the world.     Will you dare to offer grace?      Will you rise to bridge the divide?

The first rule  would be to label as Sodom   any expression    of love, freedom, and happiness     that lives beyond your permission. Call a same-sex couple’s kiss  an abomination, Condemn a writer’s provocative book  as blasphemy. The second rule  would be to ban all the expressions   and tell the people    we do it     to keep Gomorrah from our gates. Outlaw gatherings  where the voices of women can be heard. Shut down gatherings  that celebrate identities   you fear. The third rule  would be to travel to another land   where all the banned things    are legal, and splurge on ‘em  till your stomach collapses   from the gluttony of the experience. Relish, with secret delight,  their men, their women,   their delicacies,    and wealth of knowledge. Then return home  smelling of everything   you swore to burn.

not-so-secret cannibals that eat up their relatives visit me uninvited, i hear- you ate my 3rd cousin's meat, i'm here for a sibling or two, at the door, her, and her unfortunate children . i search my pockets for excuses, my ass is tender, my thighs are cold, my chin is succulent, my kpant is missing, family's looking upandan at me to see something similiar- other petty criminals shuttle across four of my windows, me-looking : they are, dressed in dresses, ball gowns, bandanas, war gear, sea wear, mister tee hears creepy stuff squarely and squints to hear clearly, me? dear. i'm poor and bad at counting. and poor because i am bad at counting: there's food dearies, i welcome them... you- sit there, you, there, you, over there, you, fuck off. you, here. and don't move. i made wood porridge. self-proclaimed witches are rarely skilled at witchery, native doctors native to dense forests race desert monkeys, and barely finish first, intact, my relatives in denmark never act like these mannerless runts, they never want to know how i am doing, they know i eat king sized meals and my slaves are adequately worked. serviced. common knowledge- i don't like you as much as you think i do, i don't like you as much as you think i should, as if it matters, she replies, before she digs into my evening food. her beggar hands . i only eat here. and she's here with her many children. 3 of them. 9 of me.

she looks like my mother, but this time with lips the color of painful sins and eyes that carry the weight of this orb she stares at me and warps her mouth downwards in a way that says your wahala is too much but she stays anyway sits on my bed wraps her supple arms around my shoulders smells like heaven I expect a word from her but silence palls us I want to scream fuck you god for staying silent and say do you know how hard it is for your lover to leave you? but before my lips shift, I stare deep into her eyes and find a million answered litanies then she holds my hands and in her firm clasp is my answered prayer.

Poetry came without a passport, no border stitched into its skin. It walked into every mouth the same. It did not ask: who are you? It only asked: what hurts? what blooms? and gathered answers like rain falling into different rooms. A dark hand writes with fire, a pale hand writes with ache and the page does not divide them, it only learns to take. Here, a voice breaks into rhythm, there, another learns to stay, for poetry is the bridge of breath we cross to say what we cannot say. It belongs to the wound and the wonder, to every body, every name: a language without a master, a quiet, and equal flame. So we meet inside its music, strangers, yet the same— held in a single line of truth, and no one left unnamed.