Perhaps the thing that makes us powerful 

is also the thing that makes us invisible.  

The body, a house of blades, folds against 

itself, blood the colour of an ocean mating  

with phytoplankton rejects its offering, 

as if part of what makes us is what breaks us. 

Suspended in probabilities, this is the beginning  

of destitution, the mind learns. My God, there is  

something beautiful about our burning: held in the light  

of the heparinised test tube, the blood deemed unsafe 

for today & tomorrow begins to dry up. Nyere m aka. 

Here, even a prayer said in Igbo is still Pentecost in English. 

The doctor speaking gibberish also knows a thing about  

tongues of fire, what they do to a body refusing to acknowledge  

its existence. My God, there is a thing about our living: 

little boys cramped in the palm of your mercy, torched  

by lust, trapped in today, unwilling to let go of yesterday, 

burning for the doctor’s lips: a gavel & spilt coffee  

on the white cloth of Sunday. The congregation now  

aware of what the mouth had for breakfast clasps  

their hands in spiteful rebuke just to make sure 

God is aware of the things they know. And this is the 

body’s first attempt at wonder, to be so powerful gravity 

melts before it, a molten cake of shame rebounding.