Samuel K. Atsi
Dear self,
you know how scared I am
under this auspice of what
everyone else calls life and home.
do you care I borrow your heartbeat to continue?
you know I’m one of those who lose their way
trying to find a path in their heart where peace must reign.
For the prayers & the faith
I carry each day hoping to survive like a pauper
I seal my plea to god(s) & weep because darkness knows me
like the sun knows the morning.
echoes of cruel satire
sink me deep in oceans of lack & want
while its tide arouses the shame of its regrets in me.
Melancholy etches on my mind being in this melee & I often
get ruined trying to be in-between.
Maybe who you are is a metaphor of who I am
& anytime people enjoy me but not you,
you try to unfold me into you, but all I know is to live you right wrongly
Shattered sometimes by these miseries,
i coil & live in the toils all alone.
I’m just a popular diarist & the kind who’s failed to revere
being you every day as you wished.
I’ve never lived exactly who you are—
no in-betweens too & who you are sometimes
makes me want to split reality as I deny I even exist.
moments like these seemed my time had come
& I was dead & oblivious—
wandering & looking for a healing that could bring me home
I’ve been a really bad image for living short of who you truly are—
the comforting sorrows & lies
I bring to your doorstep as toast for what I couldn’t be & reflect
become a subterfuge I employ always just not to be you.
But, through this confusion,
through the pain, through the losses, through the million nights
in my own strange world—you’re my home.
when this pseudo-living said— “you don’t belong here”—
you said— “come back home”,
saving me from the spell of being misidentified
you draw me into you & I into you when despair & darkness whisper near
& the sun seems void of its strength.
your words are soft & beautiful
so I always fall into your voluptuous warmth.
you’ve grace like the sun & your heart is wide like the universe
where the inspiration that still the turbulent waters in my soul linger,
a kind verve of yours shine on me & through me,
& I hear your voice say:
“Please,
Please,
let peace be still,
wash
down
every dirt of grief.”
I hold this sacredness as life
in my heart for this moment & the future I deserve.
truly you’re you, both in rain & shine
& this is the moment of a dream come true.
Samuel K. Atsi is a poet and writer. He loves art and nature and enjoys writing about them. Sam currently lives in Accra, Ghana, where he writes about his country and the everyday Ghanaian life.