Your Moustache
See, it’s not so deep.
I don’t have a crush on you,
I just think you’re really pretty.
The way your moustache falls over
the corners of your upper mouth
like a flyover. I want to know if it ever
falls into your cup of milk when you drink,
or gets a lone cube of okro stuck on it
when you eat soup.

Do you smoke? I want to know.
When you light a joint, do errant flames
singe the tips? Do you smoke
cigarettes? That’s hot.

It’s hot. I don’t
think I have a crush on you,
but I do want to be alone in a room
with you. Want to bury my face
in your shirt, memorise your scent. (I
also want to know if you can dance,
but that’s beside the point.)

I want to know how hard
the strands of your moustache are,
want to comb through them,
with my fingers.

Maybe pull a lone filament
out of my mouth. [Insert smirk]
For the aesthetics. You get it?

So, hi.

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Covert Affair
It is sweetness abounding. A fine loot it is.
From my father’s minibar, the wine—pricey, woody
and sour-sweet—swirling thickly in the mouth and
falling from our tongues in full trickles.
From my mother, I steal rare embroidery,
the soft sheets an envy. It is either silk,
or it is cotton. It is static on our skins, hairs
angled obtusely, rupture buzzing beneath.
All in all, it is a dizzying feeling. I trip
into my loot, over the brim, I fall into your cup,
flushed. Your blood, your body. It is a sweetness,
sweet, until it is not. The good wine as it pours
is a dour face on the bed. The pink/amber/red
fluid menace is invading through, it is
expanding through . . . (is it silk or is it satin?)

There is a dull smear creeping across mother’s
sheets, it is a terrific smudge. The good love
is forming a nasty thing behind my mouth.
Lord, I could scream. I bring bile to my teeth.
Time is the one thing I did not steal.
And soap. From the wine glasses, to the sheets,
to your footprints, I clean up everything.

---

Egbiameje Omole (They/he)
Egbiameje Omole is a poet, editor, and artist working from Ibadan, Nigeria. They serve as an acquiring editor for FIYAH Magazine of Black Speculative Fiction and poetry editor for Second Skin Magazine. Find them on Twitter and Instagram @morleyxoxo.