By Jonathan Chibuike Ukah
Now, more than ever before,
I’m convinced that I’m dead.
I must be among the millions of ghosts
patrolling the streets of London,
with a body but without a body,
whose heels don’t touch the shores of the Thames
without casting my shadows on the water;
I don’t envy my friends whose shadows fall on trees,
flowers, the surface of water and the moon.
I’m learning to swim in the river without drowning,
to drown without dying, to die without death.
Whenever there is a dying, there is a living,
like there will ever be a casting down,
without a lifting up to the clouds and the sky;
like waking up and walking away,
our death mats tucked under our armpits,
our graves become oil and water wells,
the source of living water, the soul-refreshing elixir,
which we will drink and thirst no longer.
Now, as I walk on the tapestry of glass,
I tiptoe to the edge of life for a taste of death,
caress the air with my tongue for a taste of life,
and languish time on the little things that grow,
hands in my jacket, feet in my mouth,
teeth clattered like a dying store,
an ancient rock site where the sun no longer shines
but the old rain has eaten the remnants of stones.
My breath of life is this respite in my bones,
that millions of people have the same vision
that either my death was past redemption
or my living was beyond death.
How could I die if I didn’t live,
unless something made me into a stillborn.
Yet, a stillborn lived in another life,
where it air-filled a large, immersive vessel,
and its breathing exploded a universe.
I look up and see the clouds glowing,
stars gathering in my eyes;
I look up to watch the moonwalk
where my heart had touched
but my feet avoided it for my safety.
My skin hates this corruption,
yet it can’t have the power to resist,
but now death is the glory of its strength,
it must begin another journey.
Do not think that I’ve gone crazy,
or, as my people often say,
that book has gone into my head
and I say things that I shouldn’t.
Going and coming is all there is in life;
while we celebrate our going like a harvest
we must welcome our returning as a seed, as sowing;
our coming is a pyramid, climbing a mountain,
where we climb into hearts to touch Heaven,
not even the sky is the limit of a life
whose return is a celebration
and whose going is a lament
by those who believe that dying is an end
and not the means of enabling coming.
No need to worry about these things
that take the juices away,
leaving the flaky, trembling husks behind.
Jonathan Chibuike Ukah is a Pushcart-nominated poet from the United Kingdom. His poems have been featured in Propel Magazine, The Journal of Undiscovered Poets, Two Third North Magazine, Tab: The Magazine of Poetry and Poetics, The Silk Literary Magazine Sublimation and elsewhere. I won the Poet of the Month Award for December-January 2025 from Literary Shark Magazine, was the third winner of the Poetry Contest at The Hemlock Magazine in 2025, and The Pierian’s Alexander Pope Poetry Award 2025.