Primal

Framed as it was, there was no difference

between the tree & the angel. & everywhere

there should be feathers there were leaves.

There was always a dark garden beneath,

amidst, underneath. Always a lot being said 

in the silence. In the way it stood at the

partition between darkness & light, so firm 

& still you could not differentiate her hunger

from anger. We were like that sometimes.

Always burning in the midday sun. Always

shadowless. Always racing through the fields,

golden light spilling out of us like blood. No

one could stop the heart from getting cut. 

We knew this. The knowledge hot like the

concrete beneath our feet. Thank goodness 

for shoes, you'd say, & again I'd imagine us

barefoot. Imagine the university some sort 

of paradise, some Eden, concrete, decrepit.

The one where we were free. Where the sun

burned through our clothes & into our skins.

Where we would run into the dark garden.

The world in the space between our hunger.

In the space between our faces, our breaths.

Silent & liquid. Warm.

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Marvellous Mmesomachi Igwe, Swan X, is a budding poet from Port Harcourt, Nigeria. He has been published in Agbowó, Collaborature, Weganda Review, Cloudscent Journal, Serotonin, Isele, and 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, the 2024 Folorunsho Editor’s Prize for Poetry, and has been 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 @mesomaccius.