The first runner-up for the 2024 Pacific Spirit poetry prize, Michael Okafor’s I Keep Touching Myself To The Theory That The Bullet Is A Metaphysical Construct, lives up to the enormous promise of its name. This poem starts with a bullet in the ribs and stays there, vivid and unquiet.
I Keep Touching Myself To The Theory That The Bullet Is A Metaphysical Construct
by
Michael Okafor
They found a bullet lodged between your
ribs, like a neatly folded love letter slipped
between a crack in a building. I didn’t
plan to write this poem. My mother prays
for my life to be different. In the dark, I keep
touching myself to the theory that the bullet is a
metaphysical construct, but it is all hypothetical.
What I mean is that I miss you—that survival
shouldn’t be optional.
No one knows this, but I still carry the bullet
in my wallet, like a talisman. I thought you
wouldn’t mind. And before you ask—yes,
I always touch it when I pass the policemen
at the checkpoint, like a copper phallus.
There is nothing left to say. I tried to scream
at the bullets to leave you alone. I am exhausted.
I never asked for the promise of grief—
the way it always returns to me, like a boomerang,
the way the wound outlives the bullet.
I know how a bullet enters the body and
dares it to say something. I know how
blood pools once the bullet exits, like ants
clustering around sugar. I hate the desperation
of the bullet, the way it ambulates proudly in
this poem. I hate its paralytic kiss, the way it
left you speechless, lying wet in a pool of
your blood, arms spread like a snow angel.
You didn’t know how to ask the blood to
stop flowing. You didn’t know
that language ends where the wound opens.
Michael Okafor is a Medical Radiographer, and a member of the Nwokike Literary Club. His works explore the human condition. A fellow of the SprinNG Creative Writing Fellowship ‘23. A first runner-up at the 2023 SprinNG Annual Poetry Contest. His poem was longlisted for the Briefly Write Poetry Prize 2024. He’s on X @okaformichael_ and on Instagram @okaformichael0808.