Drift Theory

Daniel Naawenkangua Abukuri

My grandmother used to hum in her sleep. It wasn’t a lullaby, just a quiet thread of sound, like something remembering itself. I never asked her what she dreamed. At night, when the brain enters its deepest sleep, it slows to a rhythm called delta. Four hertz, maybe less. These waves don’t burst or blaze. They drift. I first learned that in a lecture hall with fluorescent lights and diagrams of the mind. Long before that, I knew it in my body. Now I wonder if it was the same rhythm, the same low-frequency language science tries to explain. Delta waves, they call them. Responsible for healing, for memory, for the slow work of repair. I think my grandmother already knew that. They say delta waves sweep away the clutter of the day. Clear the mind. Make room. What about the pieces worth keeping, the broken things, the names we only whisper now, the losses we never fully bury? I would keep them. Let them stay lodged somewhere the current can’t reach. They also say that consciousness isn’t a light. It’s a pattern. A kind of motion. Maybe grief is part of that motion. Maybe love is too. Sometimes, when I can’t sleep, I lie still and try to catch the rhythm. I breathe slower. I listen. And in that stillness, just for a moment, I can almost hear her again. That soft humming, like the brain’s own way of remembering. Or forgiving.

The Science

This poem is inspired by delta brain waves. The slowest and deepest of the brain’s electrical oscillations, typically ranging from 0.5 to 4 Hz. This is commonly observed during the deepest stages of non-REM sleep. Delta waves are associated with restorative functions: memory consolidation, cellular repair, and emotional healing. Neuroscience identifies these rhythms as crucial to maintaining both physical and mental well-being. The poem links the waveform of brain activity with the metaphorical "waves" of memory and inheritance, suggesting that deep sleep is not silence, but a subtler kind of listening. The “waves” in this poem are neurological, emotional, and ancestral, offering a meditative reflection on what the sleeping mind carries, keeps, and washes away.

The Poet

Daniel Naawenkangua Abukuri is a Ghanaian poet, prose writer, and literary critic. A 2025 BREW Poetry Award nominee and winner of the 2025 Nocturne Ash Dark Poetry Contest, he also placed as second runner-up in the Lipstick and Gunpowder Poetry Contest, was a finalist for the 2025 Adinkra Poetry Prize, and is a two-time shortlist honoree for the Goethe-Institut’s Young Creative Writing Lab. His writing has appeared in Lolwe, Poets for Science, Eunoia Review, The Kalahari Review, Brittle Paper, Poetry Potion, Spillwords, Writers Space Africa, Wingless Dreamer, Parcham, Poetry Farm, and other literary spaces. He is the author of the poetry chapbook Petals of Love (2021) and the short story collection Bluest Petal (2021), both shelved in Better World Books, Waterstones, and Coupang. He is currently completing a poetry chapbook, All the Ways We Break, and two novels, In Her Defense and A Somber Coward. He is a graduate of the University of Ghana, Legon. When not writing, he can be found watching anime, playing basketball, or cheering on the San Antonio Spurs. Find him on Instagram @poetraniel.