A renegade's diary entry in a debris field by Martins Deep

390 words
Issue 4 (Spring 2024)


to be this lost is not a journey  to call a journey. or is it.  i mean, i'm here  & south of nowhere— two points illustrating distance,  like a colon, one dot in the blur, it almost never existed. but
 hope claims it's there, condemns me  into dreaming  behind a visor— a child  confronted with the fears of a grown man.  man, running out  of wonder, it triggers his oxygen  alarm. but i shut my eyes,   in false surrender to fate, still dreaming  where, the probability of being intercepted by a ufo on patrol  is one-ninth, or one-third  of running into god floating by navelless,  he looks on me from bird's-eye view, a soldier ant on a driftwood in the middle of the sea.  then, with compassion offers me  a compass to hold on to  with the grip of my newborn  i never watched grow under leaden skies,  to escape being my father.  & therefore, for my absence, the consequence  of being wide-eyed elsewhere equals the cost of wonder as loss, i go wandering  through the five stages of grief. alone.  where this body in its equation is a comet  that never vapourizes its ice.  i.e, survival with the condition of living  with the coldness of regret.  regret as an endless penance  without any promise of reparation.

i pray, but  but where am i under any skies.  fuck. this is space—  the scene of a market place on mute. where  stars could sing  but because they have no songbirds  to teach them, they know very little  to do than shine & impress astrologers. & oh, for eyes that has seen it all, disillusionment  is the curse.  haven't or have, though, wonder has found  rest in the past,  & i'm tracing its trail   to tread it in reverse. homesick.  listening for your pulse,  wishing  my essence into the fur  of your current pet to lay  in your arms again,  a lost cause thirsty for what we had.

& there will be no mistletoe  kisses, nor beyond it.  because i'm twenty something light years  later than our second date at habil's,  & i'm still very far away, trying  to find that speck  of dust my proximity turns blue like the presence of base on litmus to tell it is nowhere but the home  i must return to  so left behind, one bastard  son of longing.

Martins Deep (he/him) is a poet, photographer, digital artist, and a graduate of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. His creative works have graced—or are forthcoming in, Magma Poetry, Strange Horizons, Frontier Poetry, Palette Poetry, Fiyah, Lolwe, Tahoma Literary Review, Augur Magazine, and elsewhere. Feel free to say hi on X @martinsdeep1
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