"The Fruit" by Bibiana Ossai

The ghosts awaken in me 
they straw a tingle in my veins 
I listen to them play a seductive song—
an opera of notes that slithers in the air 

I fall into their trap and like a puppet 
they string me along in high and low tunes 
I look at them pressing their faces on my body
like I am looking through a misty window

their palms stretch outwards until I see them
painting the earth’s surface with my blood
the ghosts drag me by my hair and their hands 
cage me—a wingless bird in a grass-like bowl of tar

my legs walk on pieces of a broken glass sheet 
to the backyard in my home where my feet 
make holes in the wet grass with my toenails 
feasting on the soil like a hungry wild beast

I remember my unsung heroes—family 
but they fade like the clearing of a fog 
I feel myself slipping away like the tip of an iceberg
the pictures of a smile change into a taped scar that cuts my face 

when I close my eyes, the happiness I knew once 
reclines like the wave of an ocean
I see a swing riding itself on the playground—
the ghosts cling to my waist like shadows when I fall and rise

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Bibiana Ossai is a Nigerian fiction writer based in Texas, Lubbock, and an award-winning poet. She is currently a Ph.D. Fiction student at Texas Tech University where she teaches First-Year writing. She is a managing editor at the Iron Horse literary magazine. Bibiana has an MFA from Long Island University, Brooklyn where she received the Marilyn Boutwell Graduate Award in Fiction. She is the winner of the 2019 Equinox Journal Poetry Contest. Her works have been supported by scholarships and the Hatty Fitts Walker Scholarship from the Fine Arts Work Center, Provincetown, The Poetry Project, and an Idyllwild Arts Writers Week fellowship. Her writings appear in The Dark Magazine, African Writer Magazine, The Poetry Project Footnotes, Flash Fiction Magazine, and The Dillydoun Review, among others.