The Strangeness of Survival
Today, I am thinking of death
and everything about it. Yet, I do not
want the butterfly nibbling at the flower
verse in my room stamped to death by
the unsureness of persistence welling up
in my head. My window is open and the
things outside of it and in their fullness
say to me, son, come outside, see for yourself.
I know that the wildness of life
beats its music only for those who are
able to hear. I have ears, two working
leaves, and they do not know what to hear.
I swallow my words only to feel its taste well enough.
There is always something under the banana tree.
In that something, forgiveness and Uriah abound.
I still give thanks for the things living inside
and outside of me. I know that what I am feeling
at this moment only is as much as I am alive.
There are things inside of me I am yet to weigh their
nonchalant-ness. I might be out of tune;
I might have understood the strangeness of survival.
I near my window, and the evening breeze welcomes
my face, neck, and arms. I give thanks.
A smile snails out of me for the little goodness in my waiting.
Chinụa Ezenwa-Ọhaeto lives in Lincoln, Nebraska. He won the 2018 Castello di Duino Poesia Prize, Italy, and the 2022 Special ANMIG poetry prize, organized by the Centro Giovanni e Poesia di Truiggio, Italy. In 2023, he was a runner-up in the Sparks Poetry Competition, Memorial University, Canada and in the African and African-American Studies Program Contest hosted by UNL’s Institute for Ethnic Studies. He is the author of The Naming (Nebraska Press, 2025). His works have appeared in Joyland, Poetry Ireland Review, Oxford Poetry, Massachusetts Review, and The Republic.
