What Love Can Be
Poem by Jonathan Chibuike Ukah
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After we hit our heads against the sky,
or divulged the secrets of the night,
after we punched the walls of the stars
hoping to shove our fists into the moon’s chest,
we realise that this music stinging our ears
like a whoosh of wasps into our bodies,
is not what we invented as our flame.
We want to leave a memento of our dreams
as a symbol of how much loss means to us.
What if love is a constant chameleon,
rolling out spurs of strange bewilderment,
every season, arriving with a different scale
and weeping, diminishing and something else?
Love is not a dream that sleeps in motion,
or an echo with different sounds;
it is not the warmth of cold nights
or the cooling of the warmest days.
I embraced the sun; my arms died to life.
I shall need a second arm to return to myself,
since the one I lose will no longer make sense
if I stand naked in the rain dead to love.
The eyes may not see it; the ears may not hear,
but the truth is the only form of pregnancy
whose origin is common knowledge.
when beauty wears a cloak to become flagrant,
where true love is in constant decline;
so amorphous is the shadow lingering within us
that we hang our shoulders in Heaven’s line,
waiting for drying in the wet wind of time.
I have waited for the perfect storm to blow up
what I take to be the lining of the light,
yet the longer I wait, the more distant the day
shining us through this hole of quivering light.
I realise I must tear down your shame
which you wear like a wet and dirty dress
that you may be light, free and warm
glowing in my light full of love’s delight.
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Jonathan Chibuike Ukah is a Pushcart-nominated poet living in the United Kingdom. His poems have been featured in Unleash Lit, The Pierian, Propel Magazine, Atticus Review, The Journal of Undiscovered Poets and elsewhere. He won the third Prize in the Voices of Lincoln Poetry Contest in 2024 and the Alexander Pope Poetry Award in 2023.