Whispering
for Cecilia Ama Agyeiwaa

Is that your voice clattering against the swishing bough?

I am listening to the silence in the lessons of journeys of how leaves wear green caftans in the morning and at recess, surrender to earth and sunset.

I am listening carefully to the rustle it is just an old wind giving this moment a name.

Like how you remember each deluge by colour.

How you keep record for red, for the brown blotches on your sternum, how for nights you floundered like a limb pirouetting in flame.

Those days I tried to save you but, my knuckles were numb in your ache forgive me ,a child is the sizzling breath when a mother is drowning.

I unstitch the shining feather from the hem of your sepia slit forgive me,
everything beautiful is taken for the living.

I am sending you away with water, to make you understand loss is a vase holding abundance of memory.

Here’s a skiff. The eyes for paddle. To the distance.