In Your Dreams, Your Body is a Staircase by Ìfẹ́olúwa Àyàndélé

to an open door. You walk up the staircase
that leads to a foggy morning,

and you see your grandfather waiting for you
at the top of the stairs, his voice, like the slitting
blades of grasses, cuts through your body

into the memory of your first bicycle
& how your grandfather puts you on the pedals
& says look ahead to the morning fog,

and when your grandfather closes his eyes
& you open yours to dreams,

your dreams open a staircase for your grandfather
to walk through your body & bring you
into your ancestral home in Tede, but you wake up

across the river that disconnects you from a home
& your grandfather is walking on the river,
amidst floating bodies & his voice now, like the whirring

blades of a helicopter saying:
I will be waiting at the staircase of your body.

Ìfẹ́olúwa Àyàndélé is from Tede, Nigeria. He is an MFA candidate at Florida State University, and he received an MA in English Literature from the University of Lagos, Nigeria. His work is nominated for The Pushcart Prize and the Best of the Net. His work is published or forthcoming in West Trade Review, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Another Chicago Magazine, The South Carolina Review, Stonecoast Review, Moon City Review, Noctua Review, The McNeese Review, Cider Press Review, Harbor Review, Rattle, Verse Daily and elsewhere. He presently lives in Tallahassee, Florida.

28 August 2023