Sunday 2 July 2017

I am a continent
full of faultlines,
my mother
was my first earthquake

In a midsummer afternoon of August,
my lust for forbidden seed ripens,
the juiciest fruit on the tree.
I am a country full of longing.
Filled with refugees that yearn for what they fled from.
my unreciprocated passion is a river full of poison
It flows,
and the entire field is embittered.

In the winter of my adolescence
his unrequited love
is whipping the ocean into a frenzy
the ocean soaks my shores
with the stories of his wanting.
When I do not relent,
the crux of his passion builds
into unforgiving tornado
that returns
with a vengeance,
and pulverises the border wall-
he
ruins
everything
in me,
and has the
audacity
to call it
love.

I am a country that has only known war.
Everyone I've ever touched is collateral damage.

All the women in me are tectonic plates
Shifting restlessness around
We have never tasted tranquil
Or held it in our palms

There is in me the orphan island child who has only tasted separation
She spends all her time calculating the distance to home
Even though home is a battlefield
And it's a battle she's never won.

Then there's the  juvenile woman of alluvial earth
craving the richness of the curves of the river
The only country she knows
Is wet with longing

The volcanic goddess, spewing lava
Volatile and violent in her all consuming passion
She hasn't learnt yet to love with patience
To make loss her lover
Loss is the only lover that will never leave

The self sufficient plateau of maturity
The only woman in me who understands why love cannot be impatient.

We're all catching up to each other.

There is vulnerability sown into the land, fear implanted wherever the wind blows,  chaos taking birth everywhere.
We take hold of each other.
From the ruins , we rebuild our abandoned home
mountains from earthquakes and lakes from sorrow.

We are our own saviors.

- from the soil.