Mercury is in retrograde again,
and somewhere beyond the clouds,
the stars have learnt my name,
whispering it from constellation to constellation,
until every orbit bears the same old riddle:
What orbits the sun?
Friendship.
Friendship, I have learnt
can wear the face of daylight
yet disappear below the horizon.
In fair weather or maelstrom,
It arrives like a season certain to bloom,
and beckons hope,
kissed into the silence of my hearth,
then leaves a torrent that drowns every hymn I know.
What orbits the sun?
The riddle demands,
that the deepest loneliness follows the fairest weather.
I know better,
It isn’t the planets that keep leaving,
And still, against all evidence,
my heart braces itself for another forecast,
hoping one day
someone will stay long enough
to prove the stars wrong.
Obongofon Etuk is a Nigerian poet, playwright, and pharmacist, with works published in journals such as Afrocritik and Brittle Paper.