for a fortnight & half, a man in a black trench coat wakens me
into a dream—this man without face or name, with eyes culled from

the bottom of God’s blue sea, walks me through a blank baked city.
there’s a virgin in my throat squalling in a voice that was originally mine.

buried within me is an unsung prodigy, rotten secret. no abomination dwells
under our family’s roof. my brother was cast for drawing a boy’s name at the

center of a heart on his chest. sunup, light flooding through the windowpanes,
I reinvent the dream, two fingers stroking the screeching cat in me. this fragile flesh,

kissing the feet of temptation, stretches into a garden of coruscant flowers,
into shivering splendour. how I’m burning, evanescing into a place more wonderful

than heaven. I hear the footsteps approaching & cocoon into duvet this
butterfly of woman. church time, mother says. in sermon, the preacher goes: God

is all-seeing, all-knowing. this God who is everywhere & nowhere. my mother, who hears
the doors in my throat closing each time she says: mama, tell me your dreams, smiles

like God whispered into her ears. I fear the man in the black trench coat would fracture
to dust should I attempt to name him to another. not mother who’d accuse me of

knowing too many men. we meet again in my dreams tonight. I tiptoe into his city & he
barges into mine. drinking & purring God’s name like libation. the virgin in my throat

is frightened, hiding in shadows, whispering footsteps in my ears. in the end, I take
his hand & lead him into a bat-filled cave, to a place where God can’t see.

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Boloere Seibidor (She/her)
Literary gangster/seasonal romanticist. Boloere Seibidor—B.S—is an African writer, her work featured in The Temz Review, Feral Journal, Neologism, and others. She is largely inspired by music and art and all things beautiful, unnamed. ‬Say hi on Twitter‭ ‬@BoloereSeibidor‭,‬‭ ‬where she fondly calls herself a black swan‭.‬