“Back to the Beginning Which Is to Say I Am the End” by Olabimpe Adedamola

Olabimpe Adedamola

BACK TO THE BEGINNING WHICH IS TO SAY I AM AT THE END

let me take you to before the un-flowering. 
the dissolution & cracked skin. before heaven rejected my body 
& i let greatness fall out of my mouth 
in chunkfuls of liquid light. before the splitting 
open & roadkill dash & blasphemy kissed tongue. 
before, when i called myself a god & birthed scenarios into reality. 
when i could feel wings hesitating 
to spring from my back. that night we kissed 
after passing the bottle back and forth between us, 
i felt something disappear from me. i became ordinary, 
the mystery surrounding my shadow unspooling into 
long threads of sorrow & neglect. there is no magic here, 
just a child blossoming into an adult, falling back into a child’s 
blossoming again. 

from Rattle #75, Spring 2022

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Olabimpe Adedamola: “I am a law student in Lagos, Nigeria. I found a huge poetry collection in the library of my secondary school and it felt like magic. And I wanted to create this kind of magic. To awe people. And so, I wrote.”

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