Taiwo Hassan

Home, Despite

it's heavy once again, this song, this prayer,
a testament boils, whispers build, it is time, it is time.
but what is a boy if not broken pieces, shattered shards
trying to grow wings, to find a nest, to taste meaning.

you once told me home is where the dust settles,
where wet embers still carry fire in each of their
spaces, where these walls don't reject any colours
smeared by the morning sun. where
nothing is but a basket of metaphors.

this is what it means to carry shades of blue.

to journey into scars
and bury young memories,
to understand the accent of solace
in the language of a stranger's smile.
to taste far places on familiar faces.

the radio is a guest in my ears,
the aroma of coffee meets ginger,
the news is another stale bread
& this clothed house fills my bones, despite.

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Taiwo Hassan is a writer of Yorùbá descent, a poet and vocalist. A Best Of The Net Nominee, his poems have appeared in trampset, Lucent Dreaming, Brittle Paper, Dust Poetry Magazine, Ice Floe Press, Shallow Tales Review, Second Skin Magazine, Warning Lines, Augment Review, Madrigal Press, Nigerian NewsDirect, Praxis Magazine, Wizards In Space and several other places. He emerged the first runner up for the MANI 10 year anniversary Poetry Competition. A poetry editor at Jupiter Review, he's also an undergraduate student of Demography and Social Statistics at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ilé-Ifẹ̀, Osun State, Nigeria.