Table Talk with a Jedi Knight at a Space Station Abu Bakr Sadiq
in silence, my emptiness swells inside me. i’m told, the air here always arrives undressed— no oxygen, nor carbon dioxide; just thin sheets of whitespace drifting between orbs. i’m told, time runs around like a gangbuster, stitching sixteen sunrises into the arms of a day. i am always the one asking how to trace the root of my suffering back to the mouth of each fear i have ever willed myself to. afraid of what reality will gather inside the swarm of beetles i have for a mind, i ask what he does when he feels followed by shadows molded by the pain of loss. leaning towards me, he groans & it stretches into my ears as music. we sit around an imaginary table for dinner. our bodies, held up by the invincible hands of microgravity. i imagine a stargazer on earth, taking photographs of us & thinking my face, a mystery lost inside an unreflective mirror.
Abu Bakr Sadiq is a Nigerian poet. He is the winner of the 2022 IGNYTE award for Best Speculative Poetry. His work is nominated for the Rhysling Award and is published or forthcoming in Boston Review, The Fiddlehead, Mizna, Palette Poetry, FIYAH, Uncanny Magazine, Augur Magazine, Fantasy Magazine, Covert Literary Magazine, Zone 3 Press Magazine, Iskanchi Press & Magazine, Lolwe, The Lit Quarterly, Rockvale Review, Best of New Myths Anthology and elsewhere. He writes from Minna. Find him on Twitter @bakronline.