In the hour when Lagos hums beneath a bruised sky,
a figure steps out of the static of a thousand screens
and plants itself in the center of forever.
No hair dares crown this head;
it is a planet shaved clean by cosmic razor,
orbiting nothing but its own reflection.
Light lands and dies there,
sucked into the white hole of the scalp,
leaving only a faint blue echo
of veins that once carried fire.
The face is a cathedral after the congregation fled:
walls bleached, pews empty,
yet the altar still bleeds.
Eyes—
two drops of ink spilled in milk—
stare past the lens, past the living,
into the country where names dissolve.
They have seen the bottom of every night
and brought back souvenirs of red.
The mouth:
a single brushstroke of fresh slaughter,
lips swollen like overripe berries
ready to burst against the teeth of the world.
It is the only color in the apocalypse,
a flag planted in the snow of the skin
by someone who still believes in war.
White collar climbs like a glacier,
diamond stitches catching the flash
and throwing it back as tiny knives.
Each facet a cold commandment:
Thou shalt not feel.
Thou shalt not forgive the light.
The body beneath is rumor,
a suggestion folded into crisp geometry,
shoulders sharp enough to cut the gaze
that lingers too long.
And yet—
in the hollow beneath the left eye,
a tremor the size of a continent
refuses to freeze.
A pulse, stubborn as harmattan dust,
beats against the porcelain
like a prisoner carving escape routes
with nothing but heartbeat and will.
This is not a portrait.
This is a resurrection in negative space:
a ghost who learned makeup
from the inside of a coffin,
who painted the exit wound
and called it lipstick.
Somewhere in Surulere, a generator coughs.
Somewhere in Ikeja, a danfo screams.
But here, in the white heart of the flash,
time kneel and begs for mercy
from the longest gaze
ever trapped in a single frame.
And the gaze answers:
I was never yours to end.
a figure steps out of the static of a thousand screens
and plants itself in the center of forever.
No hair dares crown this head;
it is a planet shaved clean by cosmic razor,
orbiting nothing but its own reflection.
Light lands and dies there,
sucked into the white hole of the scalp,
leaving only a faint blue echo
of veins that once carried fire.
The face is a cathedral after the congregation fled:
walls bleached, pews empty,
yet the altar still bleeds.
Eyes—
two drops of ink spilled in milk—
stare past the lens, past the living,
into the country where names dissolve.
They have seen the bottom of every night
and brought back souvenirs of red.
The mouth:
a single brushstroke of fresh slaughter,
lips swollen like overripe berries
ready to burst against the teeth of the world.
It is the only color in the apocalypse,
a flag planted in the snow of the skin
by someone who still believes in war.
White collar climbs like a glacier,
diamond stitches catching the flash
and throwing it back as tiny knives.
Each facet a cold commandment:
Thou shalt not feel.
Thou shalt not forgive the light.
The body beneath is rumor,
a suggestion folded into crisp geometry,
shoulders sharp enough to cut the gaze
that lingers too long.
And yet—
in the hollow beneath the left eye,
a tremor the size of a continent
refuses to freeze.
A pulse, stubborn as harmattan dust,
beats against the porcelain
like a prisoner carving escape routes
with nothing but heartbeat and will.
This is not a portrait.
This is a resurrection in negative space:
a ghost who learned makeup
from the inside of a coffin,
who painted the exit wound
and called it lipstick.
Somewhere in Surulere, a generator coughs.
Somewhere in Ikeja, a danfo screams.
But here, in the white heart of the flash,
time kneel and begs for mercy
from the longest gaze
ever trapped in a single frame.
And the gaze answers:
I was never yours to end.
