LANGA SARAKIKYA
FLOAT
I’d wake up at night wondering if
The mildness brewing would turn into a fight
Never asking if he could dump his
Insecurity, his anxiety, his inability into you
His semen and demons would wash away your purity
Your intensity, your decency
Baby faced you’d turn to me, wide eyed and frozen
When he’d spread your thighs you’d look into my eyes
And our souls would be broken.
In our minds we’d find the sacred ladder
We’d climb up and look down at hatred, soar over him
To be counted.
We’d mask our bereavement and seek contentment
Fuelled by resentment
And we’d float
We’d float, and we’d float
We’d float, and we’d float
Beyond his mounting grunts
We’d float to the sky
And as we’d fly high and float,
We’d ask might we die as we float?
When we’d return, that’s when you’d feel your insides burn
My silent plea: why can’t it be me so you can be set free
Would follow his stumbling awkward shadow retreat
Into his beer bottle
Then I’d put your pieces back together
So fragile, used to be agile,
But now hanging by a delicate tether.
And I’d promise you that next time
We’d float higher, float faster, float further, and never return.
https://afrowomenpoetry.net/en/2022/11/10/float/
GLADNESS MAYENGA
Write about your brokenness
This is what My heart whispers to me every time I try to create something beautiful.
How ironic because most of my life I’ve been trying to find wholeness so I can finally feel beautiful.
But what is beauty?
Is there a formula that determines what we can classify as beautiful?
Do you want to know what I think?
I think beauty is responding to what others perceive as ugly and making it look like it was dropped straight from heaven.
I think beauty is torture, the act of experiencing extreme suffering for what you believe in.
I think beauty is the cross
It is teared skin and blood dripping
Being ripped off of your dignity so that other’s can have theirs.
Beauty is being King but allowing others to treat you as if you were a slave so that they can learn what it means to be humble.
Beauty is loving those that hate you the most and forgiving the ones who want to see you gone.
It is sacrificing your most valuable possession so you can gain the trust of the one who gave it to you in the first place.
Beauty is a dusty womb that still rejoices when visited by a seed after decades of waiting to conceive.
Beauty is killing your own position of power so you can save the life of a slave.
It is losing everything that you have to find meaning in those that have nothing.
Beauty is finding power in pain
Even though it hurts you to death
You still go through it because you know that the sacrifice is worthy.
Beauty is giving away your blood to a nation of unworthy nomads so they can inherit a part of your father’s kingdom and be called godly.
Beauty is teardrops on the altar, when you’re done wearing a mask so you decide to lay open your wounds.
At least that way they can get some air
And if you’re lucky enough they can be turned into gold.
Beauty is anything unpleasing
Like repentance
Bruising your ego so bad that the only thing it can think of is submission.
Beauty is a classroom full of people pleasers but you are the only one that puts God before everyone and everything.
Beauty is Sunday praises and offerings
It’s searching for parts of God inside those that he has surrounded you with.
Because way too often we see the bad in people and forget that we were all formed in his own image, so we ought to be beautiful anyways.
So to conclude my response I think beauty is seeking the parts inside you that resemble God.
Not only seeking but also becoming!
https://afrowomenpoetry.net/en/2022/11/11/beauty-in-brokenness/
MIRIAM LUCAS
Sometimes love
Sometimes love
Is running for your life
When your tanks are still full
Of oxygen,
When your heart is still alive,
When you can still hear its sound
Lub dub Lub dub
Sometimes it’s saying “No more”
And run for your life.
Sometimes love
Is choosing yourself,
Is Loving yourself,
Forgiving-yourself,
Mending your own scars,
And being true to yourself
Healing all the bleeding parts
Of you,
To tell yourself that you are better.
And you deserve to be Loved again.
Sometimes Love
Starts a NO,
And I know it’s crazy
But sometimes it means to wait
For the right season
With the right reasons.
For the right person,
And the Right time,
Sometimes love is to Wait.
Sometimes love begins
With blessings,
With Other mini humans like us,
Tiny hands not blood related
But heart related,
It starts with
“Am a single Mum”
“Am a single Dad”
And it doesn’t matter,
but what matters
Is the Thickness of that Love.
Sometimes love begins
With “Am pregnant”
I can’t handle this responsibility
Alone,
So I need you more now,
I need you Today,
And if you are okay
Lets do this together,
It doesn’t matter the Weather.
But either way I will be
Here waiting for you to come over
For me and our
Unborn child.
Sometimes love
Is not chocolates, Roses
And Candles,
Sometimes it’s a plate of food
On the table,
New books for your children, paid bill checks,
Sometimes it’s not Words
But the Actions,
And Everything in Between,
And finally sometimes Love
Is not color
Is not race,
Is not material things
Its not Rainbows,
But it’s responsibility,
It’s availability,
It’s accountability
It’s honestly,
It’s forgiveness,
It’s starting over again and again,
But sometimes
Love is simply Just Me and You.
https://afrowomenpoetry.net/en/2022/11/10/sometimes-love/
