Fisayo Adeyeye 

Penelope | carpet loom, wool yarn and chenille | Chapel of Morumbi | 2011 | Everton photos Ballardin

She waits. Watches the sun spill
burnt milk back into the sea 

and spins sunsets of her own. Weaves walls, 
spooling delicately through windows.  

When she runs out of yarn, uses hair. 
When she runs out of hair, waits 

a few years till it grows, and then
uses hair again. She wonders if instead

of waiting for the hair to grow. One day, 
she can simply thread the dead follicles 

back into her scalp. She picks her veins
as if she can unweave the longing, 

weave it back, pretend it’s hers. Years pass,
she feels nothing. Does not even remember 

why she’s doing it. Only that she’s afraid
what would happen if she stopped. 

She unspools the thread. Starts again.
The house pulses slowly, like a dying heart.

I have a couple things I treasure, but only two I find myself touching/interacting with the most. One is a white bone folder that I use for folding zines or pamphlets, which is the perfect size and very smooth to the touch. Another is a small bracelet a roommate bought for me from a tourist shop in Cuba. It kind of scratches my wrist a bit, but it has these beautiful colorful designs painted on these tiny clay blocks.

Fisayo Adeyeye is the current Poetry Editor of Fourteen Hills, a Co-Curator of the VelRo Graduate Reading Series, and he has works published in The Collapsar, The Birds We Piled Loosely, and The Wildness. His first full length book Cradles is forthcoming from Nomadic Press in 2017. Please email him about ants, whales, and other animals of comparable size at tinybluewhales@gmail.com.