I have said goodbye to myself
when some of these things happened.
I didn’t know how to betray my body
and return to what it had rejected;
all the dregs of the old palm wine,
the dust of the rice, the chaffs, the husks,
as well as the dried bark of the oak trees
or the yellow, flaky bark of leaves.
I have given up on eating raw meat,
a whole length of a live snake,
millipede crawling from damp surfaces,
and fallen wings and skin of cockroaches.
What was my heart to conquer
when confronted with a wall?
You and I have called it a year,
named time on our love,
but I fell into this pot dug by someone I trusted,
and you arrived like a Deus Ex Machina,
to lift me out of the mire.
Was I in error about something I was certain of?
Or, did time prove once again
that nothing can be right or wrong
until time made the final decision,
that there can be no last words on anything
when time has not spoken its verdict?