SQN - Sine Qua Non - Issue 1 - Journal - Page 115
SINE QUA NON
Gospel Chinedu
In A Postwar Therapy Session With An Amnesiac; He Said
I do not remember the songs.
But the voices were harps &
violins. And there was violence,
darkness, I kept running. The
breast bone halts the bullet
aimed at the thorax. But, the
bullet hole like a vein drains life
out of the body. I do not remember
who was mourned. But, I wept.
In a news headline, a boy scrapes
the remains of his mother. Perhaps,
for cloning. In another room,
all my fears shine like a chandelier
above my head. All I remember
is the expanse of my shadow &
that little area where it does not
cover. The physics of solitude
is space & want & ache & longing.
A pilgrim seeks acceptance, the
way a gun seeks a voice. So,
I welcome grief into the village
of my body. In my blood, there's
food & water. & two large rooms,
in my head & in my heart. I kept
running. That was what you had to
do to become the voice instead
of the elegy. During the war, I let
darkness seep through my mouth.
But, I do not remember the songs,
again. At the war front, I vultured
on the dead bodies, digested the
grief into memories. But here I am,
malnourished, starved of my own
reminiscence. But the clearer picture
is: I lost my grief to the loss of
memory. Which means I lost loss
to loss. I do not remember dancing
with a girl the night I first got drunk
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