1 poem

HOW TO DISAPPEAR WITHOUT LEAVING

At some point

the body learns

invisibility

is not magic.

It begins small:

standing still

while the room decides

who matters today.

Later, the body learns architecture.

Walls inside the chest.

Windows that refuse to open.

A voice stored carefully

in case it is ever requested.

In dreams, the self loosens.

The world bends,

streets widen,

names are pronounced correctly,

time slows long enough

to be inhabited.

The ceiling fan becomes

a clock counting

broken promises.

Morning interrupts.

It always does.

Quietly

the body catalogs damage.

Not the dramatic wounds

but the small erosions:

the voice trained to agreeable sound,

the joy obtained only in fragments,

like contraband.

A glass of water after crying.

The way sunlight insists on the floor

in the cracked place

where a future should be.

The body rises, unfinished.

The mind continues its negotiations

with despair.

But something keeps going:

The mind has not yet succeeded

in erasing everything.

Gloria Ogo is an American-based Nigerian writer with several published novels and poetry collections. Her work has appeared in Eye to the Telescope, Brittle Paper, Spillwords Press, Metastellar, Gypsophila Magazine, Harpy Hybrid Review, and more. With an MFA in Creative Writing, she is a reader for Reckoning Magazine. She is the winner of the Brigitte Poirson 2024 Literature Prize, finalist for the Jerri Dickseski Fiction Prize 2024, ODU 2025 Poetry Prize,  and the 2025 Rhonda Gail Williford Poetry Prize, with honorable mentions. She is also a finalist for Lucky Jefferson's 2025 Poetry Contest. Her work was longlisted for the 2025 American Short(er) Fiction Prize. https://glriaogo.wixsite.com/gloria-ogo.