The puppies chase the pigeon that cannot fly. The generator will hum and bump at some hours of day and night. The slice of moon hangs sideways in the sky.

 

That's the tree, Camelia declares. It is the tree where Èṣù receives his offerings. The tree that reaches down to the sea, all the way across from the Mississippi.

 

And the puppies, bones still soft, look for something to eat.

 

Night sky turns dusty dark blue lighting each moment, count your fingers, count your toes, count the screeching rooster crows. One outside my window starts the morning hours from 3am and then on every hour. It's been awhile since I could take the paper with my pen.

 

Forget it, I say as the past pops up and the grief tries to linger around the folds of cotton and tapestry gold. I washed with the ọṣẹ dudu, I tell ibanujẹ. I’ve been dissolved and what is left is what I carry in my head, what happened before I came. But I tried to let it go in the ocean and the salt absorbed the pink scars where gashes from the rocks before and salt streaks the walls of a new physiognomy. Set your lips to the surface of a new glass painting, look through upside down rocks of the Èṣù tree, another continent, the continent we call it because it is home.

 

You let go once and at once and at present and stars and dusty blue shades painting with a touch of purple. You can see the clouds already and the branches of the bald tree, dark purple against it. Peer into the new glass painting and all that is required to lay your eyes upon it, is wonder.

Ibadan, Nigeria, November 2022