Robotic

by Overcomer Ibiteye ​

When God died in 1942,
it wasn’t really a big deal.
Some of us just collapsed into slippery bloodless skins
while the rest found their way into fossils.
I was in the first category.
I have watched veins split in macabre elegance
until they took on the shape of standalone wires.
All the night did was speckle the sky
with infirmities
and we burned under a stigma of stars
our robes dripping with fire and ash.
This is 2042, and the air still reeks of power.
However, our bodies do not.
They have been reduced to testaments of
fizzled brain lobes,
broken bones,
blistered minds induced
with anti-telekinetic drugs.
A hundred years later, and
we are refracting into something strange,
something robotic,
something death cannot touch.
We are losing our names
to be clothed with nuts and bolts.

Overcomer Ibiteye is a Nigerian poet and writer. Her works have appeared in anthologies like BPPC, Iskanchi, Land Luck Review, Scrawl Place, Willows Wept Review and others. She's a finalist for the African Writers Awards (2021) and the Calanthe Collective Prize for Unpublished Poetry (2022). She's also an alumnus of the SprinNG Writing Fellowship.