The 99th principle of growth
In this world I kept happening, I am
my softest disaster. Every orange day,
I gather letting go. My melon face holds
so much blush and blood of the people
I know and those I stopped knowing.
I am a beautiful waft of mistakes and
these pores pouring into weekends of sleep
and escaping these strange cities
that zipped here, and its freezing reality
shows carved of winter sun. I counted
my choices in a blackened field of floating
galaxies, breathing this earth awoken by tiny
rains. These telephone wires won’t unroot her
laughter imprints. All winter, I should know budding.
Oladejo Abdullah Feranmi is a recipient of the 2026 Hurston/Wright Foundation Scholarship. He won the 2025 Rehumanize International Contest and SEARCH Magazine’s Poetry Contest, and received commendation at the 2024 HART Prize for Human Rights. His work appears in POETRY, Oxford American, Guernica, The Slowdown, Strange Horizons, Callaloo, and elsewhere.