I do not have the courage to fault my parents for their flaws
I have found that with age my hands have been stained and I am unaware
Of where my father’s sins end, or where my mother’s anguish begins and I continue.
At times, I cannot speak of what I have become, it has been…arduous.
I think there was a nurture meant for my bones that blood had wrung from my parent’s youth.
I found them brittle, barren, grasping to love me in ways that they had never been taught.
I have my father’s spine and for a time its stature haunted me.
I did not know how much mangling it had survived,
how much pain it drank to gasp as it strived.
I have my mother’s luster and for a time I thought myself condemned.
I did not know how difficult it was to drink your own tears, so as to not die from thirst.
I have found, with age, that there are memories children must never have.
This thing called blood, it hung them before my very eyes.
I do not have the courage to fault my parents for their flaws
They grew lemons where only spider lilies thrived.
Isn’t that, within of itself, a feat?
Ethel Mafwila is a Namibian poet and an aspiring novelist.