Self-portrait as a loner

A warbler crashes against my windowsill

and its scattered feathers drift like leaves

searching for a safe landing.

Though it flaps to continue its flight,

pain drips red from its broken wings.

Likewise, I am a wingless bird.

Loneliness builds its tight cage around me

and its iron bars would rather

smother me than let me out alive.

It doesn’t matter how much I try,

my body always surrenders to a slouch,

not even when I made an origami parrot once

and imagined it a companion,

and by morning, found it drowned in a puddle

of spilled water in my room,

and as I lifted it up, its soaked body

fell apart in my hands.

Jonathan Otamere is a Nigerian poet and a current MFA candidate at the University of Mississippi. He is on Instagram @joepoet_