Inertia by Oladosu Michael Emerald

Inertia
Oladosu Michael Emerald

There is a moment before movement, a silence so thick it could drown you. I sit inside it, the room heavy with the scent of my own waiting. Even my prayers feel lazy, the words crawling out like half-dead bees, their wings sticky with honey. I think of my father, how he sat in his chair for hours, watching the same news loop on the TV, a cigarette burning down to the filter, its ash refusing to fall. He called it rest. I call it a kind of surrender, a way to let the body stay while the soul drifts. Mother says, Stay still. & I do because stillness is a kind of obedience. Outside, the birds hold the sky together with threadbare wings. Inside, the ceiling lowers itself into my chest. How do I explain that the floor feels like a lover when I lie on it, that gravity is the only thing I trust to keep me here? Today, I am my father—an island of undone things, the dishes unwashed, the letter unwritten. Outside, the trees bend in the wind, but I can’t remember the last time I bent for anything. I want to say something is pulling me down, but that would mean admitting I’m not already at the bottom. Once, I heard my name & moved, once, I chased a light & called it hope. Now I let the night fold me like paper, let it write something I can’t erase.