The Grandest To Do List

My body often feels heavy

with the full weight of not just my years

but my decisions

and every inch of the places I’ve been

it’s straight from the Giver

all these flashes of memories

except they are mine

and I’m the one who had the audacity to forget them

beauty ricochets off the insides of my memories

it’s always me standing

on the edge of some knew cliff

wondering with inner mouth wide open

like flowers bursting into windows

floating in the sky

each a channel to one day

somewhere

and yet too fuzzy to truly recall

as if I’m not recalling them at all

but doing something knew

or at least trying to

some type of love that is now more foreign

because I am London

and yet know nothing of Europe

and all my things are still in Texas

except it’s none of those things

it’s just me in an open field

finally finding a space I feel safe enough to walk miles in a particular direction in

with no worries whether someone new will cross my path before I’ve finished my journey

so let me begin my To do List

42390 dreams

367 bottles of sand from different beaches

34 free things that i wasn’t expecting

45987 feelings of being connected to a large dream

239 journals about the public parks of the world

700345 hugs from family

450697 starry nights

42 bottles of water near lakes whose names I’ve not yet learnt

5000 nights in Nigeria

I am producer and director

I’m the editor and the actor

I’m the casting agent and the writer’s room

and yet I think I give it all so little thought

this responsibility 

this grand stewardship of the universe

from the perspective of these two hands

the romance in the patience of a single life

59721 thoughts of gratitude

and yet however many more are needed

isn’t that the thing about numbers

they can only ever be guess at addresses

and list too

what keen company

friends forced and lined up

quotes and boatloads

of time 

and that’s exactly what we really wanted

what I wanted when I decided to think instead of sleep

when I decided I had things to do

decades before they’d even thought to give chase

love is the only grass blade of the on the open field of our enchantment

true love

that which is most easily sworn off only to become the single defining element

of every breeze

every brick

every stone now beautiful

aesthetic and metaphor

like a photographer within the gallery of our eye

reporting on those framing the sunset

what witty love

both future and ancient

like the first words we ever spoke

forming gifts of love from time

deciding to truly be hear

and to figure out how to make the dreams fit too

I suppose I thought that’s what we were all doing

- kinyo