how fear beats us into bravery


i should have been a pair of ragged claws.scuttling across the floors of silent seas.—t.s. eliot
first, we are chicks running into the balconyat the sight of a paper kite,at the passage of a dove's shadow;then, a queue of roaches scatters at our coming.
in the fear of being frozen,we melt the morning frostin the heat of our mouth,in between our rubbing palms.
night is a sea wave roaring us into hides, yet sweeping waves onto the shore;and like spoils of war, derelicts fill thelacuna of their life with the vestige.
that is to say survival lifts us and shapes usinto heroes – we touch our fears and they releasesmokes – incense that invite gods into our dwellings:we propose to gods and they say 'yes.'
Taofeek Ayeyemi (fondly called Aswagaawy) is a Nigerian lawyer and writer with works appearing or forthcoming in Lucent Dreaming, Ethel-zine, the QuillS, Modern Haiku, Akitsu Quarterly. His contemporary haibun online "et al." won Honorable Mention Prize in the 2020 Stephen A. DiBiase Poetry Prize, the 2019 Morioka International Haiku Contest and second prize in the 2016 Christopher Okigbo Poetry Prize.

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