The Wickedest

by Caleb Femi

A swap-meet for delusions.

The light is pinstriped and scarce but your eyes see everything: particles in the air – colliding nebulas, the sandcastle in the centre of the dance. One yout tells you that every grain contains the memory of a night:

The crystal orbs of her eyes would scan the ebb and flow of community spirit.

this fucked country my direct debits hit at midnight the cost of living

in this economy, that's so real

It is true what they say: no drug is more potent than puberty and after it peaks the comedown will last your lifetime. One day you will wake up to the fog already on your bed spread like a lazy cat. And in this haze – this swooping ticking, this scam that is adulthood – you will become jaded, washed of your colour. Your juvenile eyes will harden. The days will become sticky, harder to rinse off your skin.

Love is to be full in all that needs filling.

my bruddas, I love you with all the good all the wild in me what is suffering for if not enjoyment this could be our last dancing night the day is dangerous we know that

our souls are stronger when our bodies prove their conviction.

Dancing is your body falling from a skyscraper and suddenly learning flight. I want to be this sudden – I want to be

Humour will keep your abs in great shape and make it easier to stomach the terrors we are force-fed.

Even when the music has me glass-lunged and slimy with joy, I think of you and spark my flint above the canopy of hands. The elegy ascends my signal that I once knew a marvel.

life is a pastiche of other lives

Shout-out to you, who will outlive the rest of us and carry the last memory of our youth. The stubborn weight of our giggling skulls painted in your years. Remember us well.