Debris from Apartheid

The man turns into a valley I cannot

establish or maintain. My mother does yoga. I stare

at her poses drinking her in with my coffee.

She is as lovely as roses. She is as beautiful as a

galaxy. She is as attractive as the volcano.

Slow, slow, slow inhale. A personal fumble.

There are things I don’t tell anyone. That

you’re as hard as rain. Look, here’s an opening.

A small gap for you to crawl into. The green

 

glass of a beer bottle shatters on the ground.

Read the obituary. The leaf falls. The mind seeks

intellectualism from a book. The man says

goodbye to the woman in his heart. She doesn’t

know yet that she will never see him again.

She stands humiliated but doesn’t show it, doesn’t

know yet that she is humiliated. He becomes a

graveyard poet. She will never let him go.

 

She

becomes the African Shakespeare’s wife,

Her breakfast is getting cold in apartheid

South Africa. The yellow of the egg is a

sun. Its rays cooked through gently by her

mother. The toast is burnt and the woman

turns into a flame. The man is a love story,

is still a love story to her before turning into

a chapter on trauma. The man has eyes to see

but he didn’t see. I am safe now like the

woman is safe. The woman’s blood is wise.

The man has made her tongue wise.

 

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Poetry (c) Abigail George

Image: Bianca Blauth Pixabay