TUNMISE ADEBOWALE
the algorithm ends in verona
the screen flickers.
sixteen arrives again.
every path bends toward a balcony,
toward the choreography of ruin.
the code rehearses its oldest trick:
two profiles paired,
two candles lit,
a grave dug in advance.
dating apps are soft cages,
phosphorescent with vows,
desire sold in instalments:
a rose pixelated,
a flame without heat,
a promise undone by morning.
we swipe as if in prayer,
thumbs counting like rosaries,
as though repetition could summon permanence.
faces dissolve.
love recalibrates itself
against the silence of loneliness.
a hand keeps scrolling,
convinced the ending will change.
the machine waits, unblinking.
verona waits,
and waits.
Plantain in the Snow
It should not grow here:
a green tongue pressed through
the white crust of June.
Perhaps a seed was dropped
in another season,
or a bird left it behind,
careless as a god.
I stand looking,
this weed a stubborn monument,
and think of all the things
that insist on living
where they should not.
I do not kneel.
I keep my hands in my pockets
and remember the airports,
half-packed suitcases,
voices that promised to call.
The snow will have it soon,
that is the bargain.
It rises,
a plantain,
nothing grand,
its leaves trembling.
I almost laugh.
I almost bend down.
Instead I walk on,
knowing only that in the white field
an ordinary leaf
rehearses the impossible.
Tunmise Adebowale is a Nigerian-born New Zealander. Her work has been published in Landfall, The Big Idea, Arts Makers Aotearoa, Mayhem Literary Journal, The Spinoff, Tarot, takahē, The Pantograph Punch, Turbine | Kapohau, Newsroom, NZ Poetry Shelf and Verb Wellington. You can find her on Substack.