DM Aderibigbe is a 23-year-old writer from Lagos, Nigeria, an undergraduate student of history and strategic studies at the University of Lagos. He writes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, plays, and song lyrics. His debut novel, Sisyphean, will be published in America soon.

Superstitious
By DM Aderibigbe

She is dancing in my sleep.
My dream peeps from the
door of the room, she dances,
sees my face, and smiles at me.
I wake from the dream, my lips
on the wet skin of the perspiring
pillow.

I open the window to the world,
and see my happiness walking on
the quiet street. Yes! The same girl
from my dream. I scream at her,
in a voice high and low.
I run, but she is gone
before I reach the road.

I go back up the staircase,
stand at the corridor of heaven,
praying she will walk past again.

The night crawls in like a spider,
watches me stand still for hours.
I leave it to fate and go to sleep
where she dances again, surrounded
by shadows of fire. She doesn’t see
me rescue her from the flames.
I wake up holding the pillow,
the bridegroom carrying his bride.
I go to the street to wait.

I’m bathed by the day-long sun.
When night comes again and shoos
me away with its black fingers,
I promise to rewind the future,
until fate brings my love to me.

I may be stupidly superstitious.