Rebirth | Marvellous Mmesomachi Igwe

(cover photograph direction: Victor Akhere)

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These waters could cure anything, I swear.

Forget the world and its insistence to

 

conquer. Forget all those teeth. Forget the

rejection that had dragged you mercilessly to

 

the bottom. You have tried optimism. Said

“nowhere to go now but up”. You have

 

realised now how the body is tender. And

easily ruined. And white as a lamb. And white

 

as paper. One touch, then the blood. One

touch, and the ink poured. So scrub. Stand in

 

the center. Hold still, hold soap against skin.

Scrub. Wash all that pain and frustration and

 

anger. Scrub. Don’t forget the blood, the

sadness, the scum. This lather, nothing more

 

than another amniotic fluid. This bathroom,

nothing more than another dark womb. In

 

which end, I come out and

meet myself, a new man.

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Marvellous Mmesomachi Igwe

Swan X, is a budding poet from Port Harcourt, Nigeria. He has been published in Isele Magazine, Poetry ColumnNND, Poetry Sango Ota, The Dawn Review, Arts Lounge NYC, African Writer Mag, Lion and Lilac, Ta Adesa amongst others. He is also the co-winner of the 2024 Folorunsho Editor’s Prize for Poetry and a finalist for both the 2024 Kofi Awoonor Poetry Prize and the 2024 Dawn (Review) Prize for Poetry. You can find him daydreaming, listening to his favorite singer Lana del Rey, or writing about limerence, melancholia and the mundanities of existence. He tweets @mesomaccius.