At The Table

When you're 8, lying on your belly,
choosing infinity from the table,
but wanting to taste yourself—
taste everything, taste death.

The back of my mind,
a garbage heap;
pictures woodenly framed from a past,
growth hanging, carrying the weight
of some other future, but it's still eve.

My mother knits hope into a rope,
my father ties it around my neck,
while the other end is god,
fiddling her fingers into prayers.

Amen, I say, wanting something
I won’t want someday.
But the night is young,
and holy are the stars—
pointing towards the cathedral of tomorrow,
where time is a road, fast and vast,
smooth with people as mirages.

This poem throttles home for dinner,
the table still set with dreams.

Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi, a black poet, won the Deconflating Surveillance with Safety contest and received commendation at the 2024 HART Prize for Human Rights. He was a finalist in the Hayden's Ferry Review Poetry Prize '23, with work featured or forthcoming in POETRY, Heavy Feather Review, Strange Horizons, and more.