Dreams/Seeing sun

by JULIET EZEPUE
in Spring 2023

baaba, i talked to God, 2023

Dreams

Dreams begin here.

With people like you.

Sitting and pondering.

Drinking and eating.

Laughing and living.

Loving and living

Life, our way.

A dream, to sit by the ocean and think for self.

To live among others like you

Keeping things, worth keeping.

To simply live.

For where dreams begin,

Life lives, our way.

I am in a space between dreaming and living.

---

Seeing sun

I watched you the other night,

wondered out loud to myself…

where are you?

Surrounded by so many of them, few that looked like you,

I felt like screaming out loud,

where are you?

I waited for you to turn

waited for you to look my way

waited to see if your stride

            is still as confident as you are

waited to feel whether your presence

            is just as striking too.

It is.

There you are.

There you are still more beautiful than…

Still with your crooked smile

that melts my heart like

on the day you first arrived.

Still with a voice so serene,

so charismatic

like the call of birds.

Someday, somewhere, someone like me,

will write about you,

about your confident walk,

your crooked smile,

your charismatic voice,

and how something tried but failed to dim the sun, and all its brilliance.

To know you, is to see the sun.

---

Juliet Ezepue is a storyteller, college professor, mother of four and wife to an incredible frontline worker. She is the author of over 90 academic research papers and a blog where she shares her daily musings on academic productivity and parenting in a global pandemic. Her childhood was divided between Nigeria and the US. Juliet Ezepue lives in Saint Louis, Missouri with her family.