Door

Olumide Manuel

I do not know what hand opens dreams to dawns,but I wake into the cry of the alarm. SometimesI’m out before it mouths. Then the bathroom door,back & forth, & out the front door. There’s a doorin every greeting, so I greet my neighbours.I greet the non-neighbours. I tip mama alakarafifty naira, & when I’m not too winded awayin my morning woes, I toss the crumbs to strays—I’m knocking doors that shouldn’t necessarilyopen back to me. Somehow, I prefer the doorlessnessof Keke Napep to taxi doors or bus doors.It reminds me of the one true love that shattered mein the most comfortable penance—How we fell in& out each other with unedged thorns,doors absentia, wilding our bodies in full speed.Arrows of clean delight, limbs oxbowed in floral wings.Love, in full dramatic flight & crash.So in every morning swing towards schoolin Keke Napep, I hold the rail with my two hands,sitting at the lip of its seats, where the lack of doorbreezes the traffic teeth, & myself in subtle anticipationof every possible ruin of a body. I shadow the entranceof my exit, imagining my death like a true lover of life.

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Headshot of Olumide Manuel

Olumide Manuel is a poet, educator and an environmentalist. He is a 2x nominee for the Pushcart award, a Best of the Net nominee and the winner of the Ake Climate Change Poetry Prize 2022. His poems have been published in Up The Staircase Quarterly, Trampset, Gigantic Sequins, A Long House, Waccamaw Journal, Fiyah Magazine, Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Frontier Poetry, Ake Journal, Reckoning Press, and elsewhere.

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