Emissiary

1 Minute Read Time

Lined paper torn out of a notebook and written on in pen. There's a fountain pen sitting on top — Photo by Ire Photocreative on Unsplash

Now that I know where my mother was 
and could easily reach her by the mail,

I found it hard to let her know that, despite 
her attempts at having little to do

with me, I would depart from the earth 
before her, so instead of writing her

about these truths, I am writing to you, 
knowing that if our love so much as survived,

so would this brutal truth and then maybe 
you would become its emissary.

Okwudili Nebeolisa

is a Nigerian writer whose poems have previously appeared in Threepenny Review, Salamander, Strange Horizons, and Verity La, and whose nonfiction has appeared in Catapult and Commonwealth Writers. He is an MFA candidate at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he is a Provost Fellow.

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