A Boy Ago
- Oct 29, 2021
- 2 min read
by Nnadi Samuel
We learnt the waters the length of our teenage year, brother and I. call me kayak in that lazy drift. call him the paddle wheel.
Two of us — a perfect duo, racing past bison and tulips, past the sainted mist.
once, I attempt speaking-in-tongues and brother cupped my incoherence in seraph palms, the way you size a demon before casting it out.
once, I drove breadknife to his skin hoping to leave a scar — how tides leave their remark on our vessel. hands shuffling hands: like this, we took turns in the corporal punishment of paddling.
If I’m worn out, he troubles the water on my behalf. If he is spent, I win the tide to his side and we both raced to satisfaction, else this longing burns out.
l likened crawdads to our own kind of misery, and he says, anguish comes in species.
I metaphor a bird pummeling the futile wings of its hatchling, as resilience. love is stubborn crime, he tells me, and I lavish in the knowing, nearly mouthing my yeses!.
age catches on the skin in gentle patches, where he first knew his boyhood to blossoming. If he says bro, I metaphor it as a palm soothing the first ache. If he says joy, I liken it to grief in transit.
we keep afloat this thought for months.
each night, we swam the aqueducts praying the rivers yawn into rain. each night, we god the waters.
Nnadi Samuel (he/him/his) is a black writer and graduate of English & literature from the University of Benin. His works have been previously published/forthcoming in Suburban Review, Seventh Wave Magazine, North Dakota Quarterly, Quarterly West, Blood Orange Review, Fantasy Magazine, Uncanny Magazine, The Capilano Review, Contemporary Verse 2, Gutter Magazine, Agbowo, The Blue Route Magazine, The Cordite Poetry Review, Gordon Square Review, Thuya Review, Rough Cut press, Beestung Magazine, The Elephant Magazine, Birmingham Arts Journal & elsewhere. He is the winner of the Miracle Monocle Award for Ambitious Student Writers 2021(University of Louisville), Lakefly Poetry Contest 2021 (Wisconsin), and the Canadian Open Drawer contest 2020. He got an honorable mention for the 2021 Betty L. Yu and Jin C. Yu Creative Writing Prize (College Category). He is the author of Reopening of Wounds & Subject Lessons (forthcoming). He reads for U-Right Magazine. He tweets @Samuelsamba10.
