A House Party in Which Colourful Bulbs Break Into Me as a Saviour

I throw cash at the badly behaved science-eating loneliness
from my crowd, & all I get in return is a house party filled
with familiar strangers.

The red lights snake across my west axis into the space where
colourful light
is all I need: to walk into the future which I speak of. At this party,
everyone thinks me

a gorgeous carbon that deserves to be hurried into dating, & so
the half-life dates
to a dim LED headlamp with the wrong diode. The dancehall which
used to be my bedroom

now shrinks into a tiny space between my bed & my stammering
sound system;
guess it's just harder for it to grow into a large hall wide enough
to gather

my rioting pieces away from gravity. I'm falling into my emptiness
& anxiety is not
a limitless vacuum; it's no vacuum at all. When the universe sprouts
a vein of rainbow

before my watch, I let my room become a funky theater. I invite
darkness
by washing the lighthouse off my walls with colours. It's no party
if it does not

come to the booze; for this, I put up a myriad of chasers. There is
a cocktail
for the wine connoisseurs, only that this spree is a sharp blade,
I witness it

for too long, it begins to look like an open door into forgetfulness.
To stay sober
while the party goes on, I'm gorgeously alive, practising how
to make

a night sky full of alluring Sirius with my breath as a transparent
glass of bliss.

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Poetry
-
July 12,
2022
-
1-minute
read

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Nwuguru Chidiebere Sullivan

is a speculative writer and winner of the 2021 WAN-Cookout Journal Poetry Prize.

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