trauma bond

weep and clean common areas
with your aunties. together
you fill
empty rooms with a sad
son who paints

the walls grey then white.
you find him caring
with sepia eyes.
wrapped in blankets,
you cannot be friends.

this is fire. water turned to ammonia.
cortado foam forms delicate
lithography.
when the sad son asks
for names of enemies,

you say everyone loves him.

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Ekoko Pauline Omadeke is a multidisciplinary artist who lives and creates in Brooklyn, NY. She teaches the Make Waves Poetry Workshop and geeks out on all things astronomy or space travel related. She received her MFA in Creative Writing from NYU and a residency at the Writers’ Colony at Dairy Hollow. Her work has been featured in No, Dear Magazine, Ars Poetica, and the Cave Canem anthology.