Sweet_Sultana

To breathe, I write. To forget, I read.

[queenladeefah]

So many wasted words,

So many wasted time,

So many wasted tears,

A life wasted on doubt.

[queenladeefah]

There are a lot of noise in my head;

too much beat with no rhythm

like the tantrums of a cranky child

and too much to unsee

colors too bright they blind;

like a torch on the sun and

on random times, they wear a voice

which knit whispers into a soul

reeking of bondages it burns

Can you see me? It would snore

on ears attune to the scrolls of darkness and answers are strangely never far; and never a blur.

I'm an avatar, the voice would say,

for the cracked & broken, a

thousand face without a name

like a torrent of burning nicotine

not good for anyone or anything

And I would know its familiar beat

for it is regret, a daughter of misery;

the reigning queen of despair.

©2024, LIM. Row, row, row your boat; gently down the stream; merrily, merrily, merrily; life is but a dream.

[queenladeefah]

'Tis said the way to a man's heart is through his stomach.

So she fed him stardust

until her heart became

shards of glass and her lips

a wall of shame.

She wanted everything;

He made her a thing.

©2024, LIM

[queenladeefah]

His heart is one of many things stained by time. The old thing still beats, just a bit differently now. There is no melody, just songs whose lyrics carries a gripping stench of nostalgia.

©2024, Ladifatu Isa, The Lost Song.

[queenladeefah]

People tend to believe the harsher assessment of themselves by others and he wasn't any different. He couldn't understand whether his actions were a byproduct of thoughts carefully sieved in a mind he was almost certain was entirely his or was it merely an echo of a familiar noise which blurs and bends into himself yet not quite. And like a madman, he would wonder, and wonder, until lines disappear and the loudest thought he bears was silence, and perhaps more uncertainty.

©2024, Ladifatu Isa. Footprints.

[queenladeefah]

He was another scream I've swallowed. It's funny. He was definitely a storm but I count silence on my throat when I think of him. Warm, clear, viscous silence. I know, it's crazy, yet I swear I can still taste the universe he'd burnt on every inch of my soul as if I couldn't shine any brighter than the thousand splendid suns he carries on eyes so dark they wear many winter nights. So how does one lose silence? I could close my eyes to forget, or to remember, but what happens to the musty stench of longing on every air I breathe in and out? How can a scream wear silence? Yet he was. He was a scream I had swallowed; yet another constellation lost to gravity.

©2024, LIM

[teaspirationss]

I didn't wake up one day and decide you were the one. I never liked being vulnerable. But during my sleepless nights and exhausting mornings, I felt my heart calling you, wanting to walk beside you. It was a million moments that were knitted into one. I never knew. But I wanted. It wasn't love at first sight. I don't believe in it. A spark, yes. A hunger, maybe. But as months passed, we let each other into our own little spheres of weirdness. We became our own inside jokes. We didn't save each other. But we became ourselves for one another. I thank the stars for making you.

I’ll always choose you, even on the days we don’t understand each other.

[teaspirationss]

how could you be empty and still carry the whole universe inside of you? you beat inside my ribcage like the soft throb of waves on the seashore, yet every day is a prayer to a summer of shadows we still sing under. everyone leaves an echo - darling, you’re the warmth my heart needed to survive. the more I love you, the more alive I feel. don't want you to become a chapter in my life, I want us to write this book together.

This is my favorite time in history because you’re alive right now.

[queenladeefah]

[queenladeefah]

How far are we suppose to fall in love before we get clingy? How hard are we suppose to cry before we get whiny? How deep are we suppose to get hurt before we get bluesy? How much of ourselves do we have to lose before we get queasy? What, pray tell, is the right temperature to feel anything?

Ladifatu Isa, What's the right temperature for feelings?. 20/1/23

[queenladeefah]

We care for reasons; and perhaps we shouldn't, for the reasons do not hide the echoes of half-truths and half-lies we nurture; and like scarecrows, they lay in this labyrinth of passing minutes, cutting across the edges of time, stripping us of sanity.

Ladifatu Isa, Labyrinth of passing minutes, 19/1/23

[queenladeefah]

How much of my life is truly in my control? How much of the insanity lining my life is truly mine? And me, am I truly sane?

Ladifatu Isa, Growing pains. 17/1/23

[teaspirationss]

I know you visit the moon in

your dreams & she tells you

that bruises don't tell your

stories unless you let them -

we’re no longer summers, we’re

words searching for another mouth

to be loved in, another mind to feel

safe in, but to hold your heart would

be like holding the earth before

humans existed - if we combine

our hope, we might just make it,

darling

[queenladeefah]

[queenladeefah]

"Time sighs. Where it once bled, a scar paints— bereaved of pain."

©2021, Shelf Life. Ladifatu Isa

[the-lifeless-life]

It was all the faith he could hold at a time when questions even doubted the good in good, a mind tangled with lies and truth, yet never knowing the difference between the two except that both could hurt a memory of something loved and lost.

[queenladeefah]

THE DAY THE SUN REFUSES TO RISE

My Baba was sad that evening;

The landlord has just left;

'it's been six months since you lost your job;

I have tried my best,'

He had thrown like a missile

and as silently, he had stalked away;

Head held high, tall like the Iroko,

just minutes after we had told him;

No pay, no school;

the school has sent us home,

and my Mama had cried that

The store is empty;

There's nothing left to eat!

Baba said nothing; Baba did nothing;

He just sat still; on the Baba's chair—

The old, worn-out brown couch

on the verandah overlooking the gates—

staring at the skies which looks like

the akara my sister had fried last night;

orangy with patches of blood,

patting my head softly as he rocks me to sleep

humming a familiar, yet unfamiliar song

almost like the siren

of a lost ship who'd glimpse a lighthouse—

filled with hope yet burning with fears,

and then there was silence—

I dreamt of a sun whom refuses to rise,

and then there was chaos—

I awoke to gutwrenching wails;

My Baba was gone.

©2021, Ladifatu Isa