The World Is an Open Blossoming Adeeko Ibukun (bio) Keywords Adeeko, Ibukun, Nigerian poet, human, mother, body, water The world is an open blossoming.I know it through my mother's face.Silence still shifts within human spaces.I don't know how I come to it. I knowLiving is for wandering into. I don't alwaysKnow how I come to it in everything, thoughI know I arrive in here. I look at the acresOf its turnings and the world is an openBlossoming. Silence is the tail behindEverything I can hold in there. I don'tKnow what weight it adds to the lifting bodies.I know it is death when silence is all thatIs left. I arrive in here in the unbroken clayOf my mother's smile, and the world isAn open blossoming. I arrive at the frozenFace worn to mock her death. It is allI've been trying to say and the world isAn open blossoming. I know silence is stillA still water behind a smile. I don't say"Welcome in here" to the elusive apronOf its light. I have said look at me in hereAnd mean look at the reflection of the water.I think I come in here with half of myself.I think the rest gives itself to me in everythingElse. I still consider the weight behind a faceThat is broken into a smile, a country asThe world is an open blossoming. Its bodyA shine and a contrail brisk in the water.Don't I say all of living is for wandering into?Don't I say all of wandering leaves off a jewel?I am only trying to say there is a room I am [End Page 292] Trying to reach in the acres of these turnings.It's the beauty to go through my mother's faceAnd the world is an open blossoming. I'mNot lost though the body of a still water doesNot tell me where it begins or where it ends.I don't know where to begin and I think thisNever ends? My mother says, plunge in here,But I say, can you see I am only drowningIn your still water, can you see I need noSaving and the world is an open blossoming. [End Page 293] Adeeko Ibukun adeeko ibukun is an award-winning Nigerian poet. He received second prize in the Sentinel All-Africa Poetry Competition in 2012, and his poem "A Room with a Drowning Book" won the 2015 Babishai Niwe African Poetry Prize in Uganda. Ibukun was a guest at the Lagos International Poetry Festival and Ake Arts and Book Festival in 2015. His poems are widely published or forthcoming in local and international journals, including Sentinel UK, Open: Journal of Art & Literature, Salamander Magazine, 20.35 Africa: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, Expound, and Fortunate Traveler. He lives and writes in Abeokuta, Nigeria. He strongly believes every Nigerian youth has a political duty to help Nigeria find peace. Copyright © 2021 The Massachusetts Review, Inc.