I know how this ends:
I stain pages, so that I may sully something, in kinship,
So that I may mar as time has done to me.
There are things my shadow could not begin to whisper:
Even the birds had abandoned me once,
The sun never came again, when the dead worshiped its warmth, as if it were the moon.
I’ve held sobs as lullabies:
The sounds of plates shattering and screaming as the hum of my youth,
If then I find that peering into the abyss has become drivel, there I think envy would bed me,
I fear that the earth beneath my feet would’ve abandoned me too.
Sometimes, a child cries:
A woman sobs as she kisses her daughter’s hair, wetting her scalp with tears.
I feel that these empty prayers fall onto deaf ears, prey tell how can I be pleasing with no faith?
I found the colour pink particularly unappealing:
I remember when my mother bloomed with blues, purples, and reds, my pink curtains tinted her skin.
It was striking how easily my sanctuary broke.
My Madonna had been struck down, her halo a noose that formed a fist in her throat. How could I not think of it as a terrible colour?
Ethel Mafwila is a namibian poet and an aspiring novelist.