Self-Portrait and Broken Grammar
I is a plural.
Was / were / will be
arrive simultaneously.
My pronouns migrate
like unsettled birds.
The sentence refuses
a single spine.
Subject wanders.
Object resists being held.
There lies the middle ground between colon and collapse.
I misplaced certainty.
Delete the binary.
Backspace the myth of one.
I conjugate as weather—
Storming, breaking, coming back.
Footnotes in my blood.
There are margins in my mouth.
Read me diagonally.
Read me as aftermath.
Where the line breaks,
something honest leaks.
Abraham Aondoana is a writer and poet. He is a fellow of Idembeka Creative Writing Workshop 2026. He was selected for The Inaugural Class of The Jésùyẹmí Poetry Program 2026. His poem was shortlisted for Interwoven Anthology 2025 (Renard Press). His works has appeared or forthcoming in Oyez Review, Steam Ticket, Cawnpore Magazine, San Pedro River Review, and elsewhere.