self portrait as multiple dreamscapes, each craning its neck towards home

I run back to save myself from the arrival
the plane tucks in its wings & is suctioned back into the sky

the sun relapses orbit

(I have trouble remembering my dreams
like I have trouble remembering the face of the child
that will one day bloom inside of me)

his face like the face of the creator hovering over the deep
(I knew and yet could not be known)

I look down and watch the ground grow into focus
the floor becomes lava and I dissolve

only the Atlantic can tell me of my body
(waves remember me well)

I wash up along the shore
& the gulls sing my coronation
sing, boy with crown full of salt

          boy, coughing up ghost through salt water

I whisper the name Elmina
and the slave castle crumbles to sediment before me
wet, I dry my hands across the dust of us

          lift my fingers to my face and paint my brow with mud

marvel, as my hands flicker in and out of time
(who am I but the bridge that brought me here)
drums sound in the distance

          I open my mouth
and an egret raises its head to speak from the deep of me

I reach up my hands to wring the bird by the neck
halt, fall to my knees startled by my violence

soften into prayer
          (holy enough to coax the song from my throat)

I fold my body around the mouth born bird
crane my neck to the sky
(bones are buried there)

          a woman pounds cassava and yam

& her pestle beats against the sky
Nyame retreats (embarrassed)
my body

          the pestle

I am held and pressed into that which will sustain me
(my mouth opens and is filled)
in december, I cradle a mango

peel the red green flesh till it rests a shimmer in my hand

my mouth opens and the wet drips down my face
my mouth opens and I fill and fill and fill
my mouth opens and flickers into a seed

I press the seed into the sand

a seed grows root
a seed bares fruit
before the fruit, first a flower

          before the flower, first a bud

green and flickering
my mouth blooms