An EXCERPT FROM "BUT HERE YOU ARE"![]() Tonight, instead of planning dinner, a mother planned her daughter’s funeral. Like it is done to sacrifice, she dissected her heart and served her memories to the longing ears of consolations. As her teeth grated seasonings of darkness she tries to scrape out God from all the corners of this moment that she could find. Maybe God needed to pick a few of our sorrows from earth and this mother’s child's feet were the perfect set of f(or)(uc)ks for it. “Is this God way of typing
a s p a c e b a r in my biography?” this mourning mother asks. In prescriptions to keep her spirit calm a friend said, “have you tried thoughts and prayers?” But some are too religiously blind to see that this needs more than getting better or curing or healings or miracles. Last night, the fingers that used to set the table before father arrives was swinging her arms at her rapist and killer in defense and the voice that calls everyone to dine has been sown into the shadows of these past hours. Tomorrow, her name will change and marry an #hashtag, it will be signed as headlines on the new-s of your lips as if this too, isn’t one of the old things we have tried to bury underneath our tongues that has reincarnated through another woman’s body. On Sunday, this will become a saint and moral lesson for the other girls who are yet to imagine that injustice against who they are is just a quicker route to heaven and she will resurrect in the prayers of older men and women who rebuke this sorrow. Forever, her name will drown in her mother’s blood and become buried in her bones. There is nothing that can prepare a parent for their child's bodies laying underneath headstones of death no matter how beautiful; not even love is brave enough to teach a mother how.
4 Comments
Sokuma Theophilus Mshelia
20/4/2019 09:10:41 pm
Wow! I totally loved this. I love the many themes this poem tries to cover; a mother's grief after her child was raped and killed. The line where the mother asks if this is God's way of typing a space bar into my biography gripped me. It's even sad to think that people make grieving seem as something wrong. Something to pray away.
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Michael
29/4/2019 05:16:50 pm
I had to read a second time. Strong narratives.
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