Michael Emmanuel

morning with tea

my mother is lull & longing. she brews tea just
to watch the water heat up, watch the color spill
from the teabag, soiling the pot, the clearly
distinct layer between liquid & granules blurring
into one large swirl. she pours one-fifth into a cup
and sits by it in the balcony, breathing over a novel
about war heroes. in the novel, as in this house,
someone is dead. someone’s last name has abandoned
the squad. a priest is counting elegies, but
they could be blessings if inverted. in one chapter
is a field of scattered mangled parts, so that when
you pull out the weed in a garden, you could be
undressing somebody’s wound. mother describes
this as therapy. and be mindful when you meet
a stranger sipping tea, they could be practicing
new ways to preserve a lover’s soft memory.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Michael Emmanuel is a creative writer from Lagos. He was a semifinalist for the 2021 Jack Grapes Poetry Contest, a honorable mention for the 2022 Stephen A DiBiase Poetry Contest and was on the longlist for the 2021 Ake Creative Trust Award. His works have appeared in Ake Review, Jalada Mag, Twelve Mile Review, perhappened mag and other places. He is on Twitter @mikey_emmanuel