A Tale of Two Choices
By Nwodo Divine

 

full moon gibbous
over a lambent bay
tiny plankton stars
burning out in the valleys
He’s laughing,
humming,
asking for a cartographer
of straight lines
and predictable tides
but I collect barnacles
on the bones of shipwrecks,
laugh with octopuses
in strange languages.
A jeweled tide
or the vast, inky dark
teeming with unseen life.
the choice, a pin on my boot
anchoring me to the known hull
or letting the current
carry me
out to sea.

 

Nwodo Divine is a Nigerian writer and editor. He earned his B.A. in English and Literature from the University of Benin in Nigeria. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetrycolumn, African Writers Series, Alan Squire Bulletin, The Winged Moon, and other publications.He is currently an editor at Akpata Magazine and a submission reader for The Word's Faire.