Dara

More than she could bear,

She let her heart feel the heat till it hit.

She turned her ears away from euphony

And watched it hop on the fast rhythm of agony.

She quashed her skin and let it obey the wishes of life,

So she painted her glance on a steep lance for relieve.

Day after day, she peeled her skin like a yellow ripened fruit

Of a stretched crescent-shape, except she bled wine.

"I've had enough of the cut", her skin blared,

She numbed in fear, twinges of scruples drenched her.

"One last cut ere we hit hypodermis", - her pain pled.

Afterall its her skin and not a sin, so she obliged her impulses.

She dreaded bleeding to death in the trance of her indulgence.

But the fear of pain wouldn't let her stain her decision with doubt.

She want the pain gone, the cut is nuff to chain her pain.

Thereafter, she'll unhinge her drawer, dash a smash on the cutter

Endure the sputter, and let the gutter take the bits.

Then she'll be far gone like the smoke of an expelled cigarette,

Gone away from the pressure of unrealistic touchstone lynching her

youthful existence, away from the shackles of colored love and broken canvas.

Gone away from the bondage of mutilation and agitation.

"But until then, let me take one last cut",- she says,

then comes another cut after another.

…and she pushed further, and never stopped cutting.

— Omotola J. Oluwadarasimi —