My pillow is a sympathetic flower
I soak its trustworthy roots in starlit tears
Drowning the day’s final hours
In the pain I’ve harvested throughout the year
Its cotton tongue licks the sorrows from my eyes
I allow it to savor the salt on my cheeks
To cradle the darkest corners of my mind
my heart that’s raged inside me for weeks
I let the charred sky eavesdrop on my unremitting agony
Whispering secrets about my scars and fears
As if the endless beautiful galaxy
Has a pair of unoccupied ears
My bruises and blood spill into the moonlight
Only to be swept aside by the indifference of dawn
My misery always craves an unfair fight
So, when the door is locked, my sword is drawn
There is a battleground in my ribcage;
A massacre in my mind
But I wipe the anguish from my face
And slip on a practiced smile
A zipper clenches my mouth shut with its tenacious fist
Fusing together my stubborn silver teeth
To lock all my troubles behind stagnant lips
Because I’d rather suffer in silence than dare to ever speak.
—
Read – Fifty Dollars for a Night – A Poem by Akuei M. Adol – South Sudan
