self-medication as a result of grief-sickness
by Olude Peter Sunday
prologue:
self-medication can be dangerous because your
depression can make you consume an overdose of
grief that may quickly trigger other medical problems,
such as mind abuse and further medical dilemma.
Listen, shall we then cheat on the awful stings of loss so that grief may unbound? God forbid. Jarring clouds of grief gathers into a boy’s eyes like mist from the distance. I fold my flesh between mosquito-nets doesn’t mean I can’t tow twenty pills of grief, gulped down with water mixed with 7up & ocean-salts. Earlier, a son settles into the shadows, in solo,—in sunburn settings. He is seated like a stream whispering requiem into the sea, he soon surges on bare ground, eyes sifting groans into the basket of bawls & bereaves. His finger flips away bawl drops, the way it tastes like cascara in the craw, like green tea and cranberries, like nothing’s sour but bitrex. The winds threw out hot shades of frost into his lungs & the tiny spaces between the window pane wheezes while the moon moans into dirge skies. I am pleating in the corner of a room, gnashing my teeth between untitled alphabets, letting Anna Kendricks when I’m gone on the replay, rust into my ears like unsolicited salvation. slideshows of past pictures flip over my head like 1940 fireflies feasting on the flares of light.
epilogue:
I poured five litres of olive brook into a bowl & bathe my body
with the leftovers of elegies scraped from the tragic tip of
a widow’s tongue, & that night, my consolation doctor came
with tons of tigernuts, bangs two coconuts naked, peel some cucumbers into the cluster & grinded them alongside the company of dates. he then sieves it & calls it kayamata.
take. he says, it is the only grief-sucker that sweetens sturdy loss into stillness
Olude Peter Sunday is a Writer, an Artist and Poet from Ogun State, Nigeria. He has few of his works featured in Magazines including: Hayden’s Ferry Review, Caffeinated Journal Anthology, The Rush Magazine, Non Binary Review, Lighthouse Magazine|Black Girls Project, Shallow Tales Review, Paper Lanterns, Typehouse lit mag, Blue Marble, Hyphen Punk magazine, Tree and Stone magazine, Flash Frog, Last Girls Club, Native Skin literary magazine and others. He won the 3rd place prize in the Endsars National Poetry contest held in October 2020 and the 2nd place CoffeeTable Art Book Prize February 2024. When he isn’t writing, he is painting at the Corner of his room or permutating Rubik’s cube. He tweets @peterolude.