Flowers
Marvellous Mmesomachi Igwe
It’s more like a new house you move into.
Everything clean and well-arranged. The
walls white and gleaming. Fresh flowers
scarlet in the garden beyond the gate. It’s
more like you live there long enough and
things start to break. The speech begins
to slur. It’s time for repair. Only this time
there is no one to do the repairing. Only
this time you cannot dip a gloved hand
into yourself. Cannot mend your
neurology with a scalpel. Cannot amend.
You knew some things were just beyond
saving. Knew some things were damned
from beginning to end. The flowers
had begun wilting, yet what could you
do? What could you do when even your
muscles had wilted into themselves? All
the ways we are reduced to animals all
too quickly. All the life and vigor gone
in a flash, all the powerfulness—gone
before the end of the sentence. We
were gods once, you and me, we could
have had all that we wanted. The lights
are failing one by one and now we are
trapped in the darkness of our flesh.
Did you ever figure why the body
could choose to sabotage its own circuitry?
Tell me, what was the purpose of my
misery, of your neurons misfiring? All
I wanted was a good life. All I wanted,
my happiness. As if the body was not a
monster intent on self-consuming. As if
the flesh was not a tomb to itself. The
sunlight streamed onto the garden
with all the flowers wilting—and I
wanted it, that garden, that golden light
triumphant against death. All I wanted
was good health.
Marvellous Mmesomachi Igwe, Swan X, is a budding poet from
Port Harcourt, Nigeria. He has been published in Palette Poetry,
Chestnut Review, Electric Literature, Poet Lore, Sontag Magazine,
Agbowó, Collaborature, Weganda Review, Cloudscent Journal, Serotonin,
Isele, Dawn Review, amongst others. He is the winner of the 2024
Kukogho Iruesiri Samson Poetry Prize, co-winner of the 2024 Poetry
ColumnNND Chapbook Award, a finalist for the 2025 Rhonda Gail
Williford Award for Poetry and was shortlisted for the 2025 Alpine
Fellowship Poetry Prize. You can find him listening to his favorite
singer Lana del Rey, or writing a poem. He tweets at @mesomaccius.
