May 25, 2024

by CHIWENITE ONYEKWELU

Names & Origin

     Let us begin from the beginning. From Eden,

radiant & green. When God made 

     man, he was called Adam— meaning earth, 

or the ground. His body unsullied     named after 

      its softest hue. God made a woman & 

called her Eve.       In Latin the word is Eva, musical 

& lush. In Hebrew it is Chayah,     meaning 

      living or to give life. For every door translation 

opens, something tears through the wall      un-

noticed.     Patron Saint of bloodroots. Holy One

      of the feminine sore. Here, take it— 

a name reserved for God. To give life.  The syntax 

aligns, floral as a eulogy. Again in Latin    the word 

      for both evil and apple is malum. 

Sometimes I think the name was severed     for me. 

     Think my life backwards, beyond this adult dirt. 

Beyond addiction & a hovering guilt. Malum. 

     The human throat, since Eden, yearns mostly for 

what it should never have. At Nine-thirty years, Adam 

     was gone— one exile slipping into another. 

In holy books, barely a word is said    about Eve's death. 

Unlike with the apple, she leaves the pages un-mourned.

     Just disappears— like many women of the past. 

Except in this case, by omission, she’s immortalized.

*

What I Know About Hope

I wait for it as a door would wait for a hand. 

    Sometimes, absence. 

Sometimes a shove swinging at the hinge. 

    To open is to bare 

your body towards light & risk everything 

    you’ve learned 

of the dark. I say Come on in, Come on in, as 

    if I'm not proficient 

in my misery. In the past, I would wear my best 

    face, put a smile 

where a scowl would have been. They called 

     me Luster. In the past

I claimed ownership of everything, except the 

     boy I was when I climbed 

into bed. To hope is to stand before a gun & ask

     for anything other than 

a wound. It was the Greek god– Hephaestus– 

     who after a terrible fall, 

learned to walk again despite his grotesque. I’m 

      no god but I want

my story as grand. I want the blood as well as the 

      clot. I want, like a door 

in the mouth of a cave, to surrender my darkness

 even for the smallest light.