My pain is my own

My pain is my own

I know it intimately

It is with me all day

like a member of my body.

The world smiles at me in desperate oblivion

I, too, a weak smile must now return

“Let sleeping dogs lie” I say

because at the end of the day

It is an unwritten agreement

that my pain, after all, is my own

and I must know it intimately.

My dreams are my own

that I struggle hard to achieve

I’m in my head all day

scheming, strategizing…

Everybody looks at me in scornful derision

“Me and my castles in the air”, they say

Well, when it’s all been said and done

like it applies to everyone

my dreams are my own

that I struggle hard to achieve.

Bio

Mr. Oluwaseyi Adebola (MBBS, MSc. MRCS) is a Nigerian trained doctor currently working as a neurosurgery specialty registrar in Liverpool. He has a master’s degree in translational neuropathology from Sheffield Institute of translational neuroscience & a distinction in advanced diploma in creative writing from Austin Peay State University, Tennessee.

He is the author of a collection of short stories titled ‘A Cluster of Petals’ which was shortlisted for the 2019 Quramo Writer’s award and the 2019 Afire Linda Ikeji Prize for literature. He is also the founder and curator of CreativeNaija.com, a social network/marketplace for creative Nigerians via which he curated the work- “I Am Nigeria: An anthology of what it means to be Nigerian in past, present and future tenses”

Follow him on Twitter @laylow1388

Purchase and review links of his works: LINKS