twenty twenty something
by Eloghosa Osunde
Eloghosa Osunde, digital photograph. Courtesy of the author.
TWenty Twenty Something
Eloghosa Osunde | May 2025 | Issue 45
the drug kept riding my
head until I slid past sane
into the room out back with the shivery-silver hue
we blackdanced there until I felt the heartbeat thrash onto my tongue
another pill and some liquefied
shimmering later
my god,
her thighs turned hunter hills
want restless in my gums
i couldn’t decide where next to mottle
so first i stilled, thawing by the floodlight
before choosing to move headlong into risk’s waiting jowl where then,
i took what I was given, trust me
took what i could took what gave in packed what dared, shucked all fear
tick tick ticked took turns with
time multiplying until its hands melted off
an earned weeping howled down my fingers, aquifer invisible
sweat highlighting that torso like a neon body chain
sweet river into river,
look at this dazzling confluence we freeforged
when in the history of this planet has it ever been done like this
exactly
exactly
both on it,
that aftermath that doubles as a spaceship
triples as an ascension
going above ourselves still
jettisoning all reason
fuck it, everything backwards,
me donating my mind to the opposite of science, you snatching your skeleton from the earth, running backwards into the future, us dying some wild dazzling deaths before ever becoming birthable
the world beneath us like specks of
blue dust, everything opalescent
the sky says: why rush your certainty?
the moon says: why hurry your readiness?
the ground says: if it is sturdy, it will hold.
in response, we make out on that beach in the open, say it
screw the law who made it anyway bring me out of me raw
i have always been one for distortions,
always been a friend of
substance-in-the-plural
that time when someone said it was already in my genes no point fighting, what did i do but make a joke about denim and camouflage, disguising my genuine fabric
as the whole room collapsed into a dark comedy
when I couldn’t come down, she rode me into dawn
i said what?
she said, what.
the night is peeling off above us as we swap gifts like ghosts:
i hand the astronaut in her a whimper from another dimension she loves just as she presents to the linguist in me that polyphonic sacrum
it’s like that: there is no end to our
generosity
give me those eyes to go,
lend me that hand for later
becoming regular
we could run right now, we both think in clear vermillion
you this way and me that,
before the morning gets a chance to question us
but we are animals in the end are we not
are we not
exactly
so we are there when it comes
still and still, stubbornly interlocked, staring the threat right in the eye as it rises over the horizon because how dare
the sun
Eloghosa Osunde is an artist whose work you either have heard of or soon will.