Two poems by Adedamola Olabimpe

The Bitterness of Nineteen

fog & car alarm lullabies, take note of this unrealness.

these are the end of your teenage years & you are wasting away like all lonely teenagers do.

mirrors are terrifying portals to the black holes around your eyes,
to your hollowing neck.

you, falling angel. you, fallen angel.

something dark & silky has found home in your body but this is not the first time you have had to share your home with a foreigner.

all the moments of unexplainable shame buzz & flicker when you think.

you want to love yourself but the mistakes keep finding you & keep finding you & keep.

 

 

 

What I mean when I say I have a dissociation disorder

I mean my brain likes to kamikaze when the pain is too much for it to bear.

I mean I have never been able to be one person for too long. I mean strangers are hiding in the spaces between my teeth & they like to hijack my body.

I mean you cannot be in love with me because I don’t even exist. Like a helium balloon in a child’s sweaty fist, I am slipping away from this body.

I mean time likes to play tricks on my mind. She bends & folds, tears me away from the present and forgets me in the past.

I mean my entire existence is sometimes a fever dream & I have to help myself remember my name.

I mean my memories are sandcastles I don’t remember making stuck on the shores of an angry sea.

I mean I am superhuman. Watch me dissolve into my sheets. Watch as I exit the plane you are tethered to. Watch me become my mother, my mother’s mother. Anybody but myself.

 

 

Adedamola Olabimpe is a writer currently living in Lagos, Nigeria. They think white bread is one of man’s greatest inventions and will probably fall apart without headphones. They have works published in Rattle, Anti-Heroin Chic, Sub-Saharan Magazine and others. You can find them on Instagram @borednigeriangirl and on Twitter @lilbrowneyedfae.