Content Warning: mental health
Naana Eyikuma Hutchful – On the basis of nothing changing/ once again/ I
See that I am taking myself too seriously/ not seeing the comicality of the traffic lights at the pedestrian crossing red only long enough for an olympic speedwalker to cross the entire stretch/ of barely missed trains/ palms held to the forehead/ tossed onto a swelling pile/ of the man with the red roses/ purple peonies/ lake blue lilacs/ selling young love and yes/ slightly older love too– it can still happen for you/ down by the train station entrance for the particularly forgetful lovers/ and of how he is saving lives/ a modern day miracle worker/ how he helps them invent mindfulness out of color and dirt/ a sleight of hand of sorts/ vibrant petals that purr and coo like a promise/ sweet on the tip of the tongue/ and who knows maybe that is how the bags/ transient/ slowly inching closer to the door get unpacked/ and undone/ remade in a domestic sort of satisfaction/ of the Camus-endorsed suicide of giving oneself completely over to another until/ there is so little left that there is no self/ but I digress/ I mean to say that life can be beautiful/ is beautiful/ like a violet hyacinth floating on a pond/ soaking up its own reflection/ like a restoration/ I mean to say that when you sit on the deck/ looking out into Vy’s tended garden/ a swirl of fallen leaves marking the edges of your self-imposed containment/ that the soft chirping on the breeze/ right there by your ear/ is telling you that you can be free.
Naana Eyikuma Hutchful (they/them) is a Ghanaian writer with work appearing in Bending Genres, Gone Lawn, Maudlin House, Unbroken Journal, and forthcoming elsewhere. They like sunrises, baja blasts, and Wong Kar-Wai films.
Artwork (Haiga): Consumed by Diane Lowman
Diane Lowman is an award-winning essayist, memoirist, and poet. She served as Westport, CT’s inaugural Poet Laureate from 2019-2022. Her essays have appeared in many publications, including O, The Oprah Magazine; Brain, Child; and Brevity Blog, and she writes a regular column, Everything’s an Essay. Her first memoir, Nothing But Blue was published in 2018, and her latest, The Undiscovered Country: Seeing Myself Through Shakespeare’s Eyes, was published September 2023. Diane received her MA in Shakespeare Studies from the University of Birmingham’s Shakespeare Institute in 2017. She has explored other forms of literary expression in more than 2,500 haiku and in essays on and reviews of Shakespeare’s plays in various academic publications. Diane teaches writing, Shakespeare, and yoga, and divides her time between her hometown of Westport, CT, and her home away from home in Stratford Upon Avon, England.