Measured
She wore a purple jacket,
yellow blouses folded like weather.
Blood remembered as red, softened to pink.
Roses behave in pictures,
every flower pretending the garden
never learned the word weed.
The floor knows.
The ground keeps sand in its mouth.
The mind pours quietly—
hunter and prey sharing the same day.
To be free is small:
a grin held back,
a shy turn of the face.
She knows.
Gil whispered it once.
Weak doesn’t mean empty.
“I’ll take milk with chocolate,” she said.
The green of the village stays in her eyes.
Old movies flicker yonder.
A borrowed style she wears still.
Gill, ash, Qwerty prayers,
biology insists, but
Zach and Seth keep trying anyway.
A wee breath catches—asthma on the hill,
the road to somewhere kinder.
His voice once said, you’ll be well.
She got lost, not broken.
That’s the sye she trusts now.
Agnes held her hand,
feel—you are better than the fear.
The world repeats yellow,
then learns ark,
then tastes lemon, orange,
one mercy after another.
A year passes.
The lady keeps walking—
not healed,
but held.
=====
Corridor with a Fork
This life begins as façade
a parade you partake in
because the caretaker calls it a career.
They promise Paris, Maldives,
a free trip, a glossy field trip brochure.
They say pursue,
and the girl learns to measure herself.
The woman keeps measuring.
The boy is renamed MAN
somewhere mid-sentence.
Every voyage needs portage
carry your own weight,
stir porridge with borrowed faith,
smile for the photo, say it’s good.
Dreams run on fuel;
someone else sets the price’s prim grace.
Opps.
You learn where to place toe rings,
how to keep nails neat,
how to preach confidence,
how to be proud without showing pride.
Time narrows into a corridor,
a curtain between want and permission.
It’s common to hear come on,
to answer my mind,
then swallow it
my mouth, today, done.
The sun was told to wait.
The field remembers Seymour,
how hope can stun like Fuji light.
We drink ale with our name mispronounced,
bend around a curve, choose a fork,
say don’t while meaning maybe.
In the hall, cologne masks fear.
Cellophone hums a thin joy.
We watch fish move without asking why.
Thanks, say the finders
Hons, stans, just passing through
then shiver at the ruins stacked like logs.
Some of us are Cyrano
brave behind someone else’s voice.
We buy ourselves on iTunes,
live on subs, cheer dubs,
fly to Dubai on borrowed data.
The game feels rigged,
and yes, we get addicted to the almost.
Yessir, adulthood arrives.
It hands you fault, a code,
and says: choose.
So I choose to speak
not perfectly,
not loudly
but enough to let the curtain move,
enough to walk the corridor
without asking permission to arrive.
=====
Poems (c) Kamaldeen Aishat Temilolu
Image: artem leschenko unsplash remixed