A Perilous Liaison.

Olatunde and she, knelt
beneath the same cross.
Sharing a missal, they were
close enough to smell the sweetness
on each other’s breath.
They talked shyly initially,
laughing unnecessarily,
she, unraveled metropolitan inanities
he, extolled the beauty of her wilderness.
Thus, they came, breathless, into each
other’s lives and reveries.

Shared moments fizzed by, yet not one was missed.
Their liaison, despite its perils, cradled them
and consumed Christmas to crucifixion in the time it took to kiss.
Crossing cultures with bravura,
mixing colours with chutzpah
and with beguiling attention to each other,
they spanned the chasm of generations
with viaducts cemented in trust.

They stood, unblinking through storms of bitterness,
siphoning the wind of those racist tempests
toward the fervour they shared.
Fearlessly shouldering burdens and cares into
a blackness, whitened by passion’s flare.

But from the flame that lit their route
crackled pernicious, unholy sparks.
Condemnation, spat from bloodline roots.
Viaducts crumbled as passion flaked to dust
Neither chutzpah nor bravura
could restore that spring-time lust.
Both aware of love going amiss,
they bought each other missals
to avoid the pungency of halitosis.