Carolyn W. Gatonye | I Hope She Wears My Skin

I Hope She Wears My Skin

I

I hope she wears my skin,
Justice.
I hope she wakes up
and fights the pain in Goma,
where the mountains watch in silence,
and the rivers carry names
no one dares to speak.

I hope she gets clothed in conviction,
stitched with the threads
of every girl who bled unheard.
I hope she walks barefoot through Bukavu,
feels the stones that tore through my soles,
I hope she hears the echoes of women
who birthed grief in bushes
with no hands to hold them after.

War did find me,
Found me soft
Claimed the cobalt in my land.
And took my body like it took the soil,
mined it raw,
left it hollow.

I was just a woman,
Feeble,
with calloused palms
and market-day dreams.
But they came like locusts,
with guns and greed,
and the permission of silence.

They didn’t need my name,
just my fear.
They smeared me in shame,
As they took turns
and called it spoils of war.

If she ever comes,
Justice,
let her not come in metaphor.
Let her come like a child,
forced out of me
by gun butts and sticks,
screaming,
the kind of scream
that doesn’t end,
only changes shape
into gavels of law

II

Let her come carrying that absence.
Let her weep with my body.
Let her rage with my breath.
Let her gather the bones
of dignity scattered like millet
in fields trampled by boots
and bloated promises.

Let her smell,
the stench of a city’s forgotten men,
of bodies rotting in morgues,
where each corpse is a question
no one dares answer.

Let her come like a mother,
fierce, unyielding and loud.
Let her speak with my throat,
cry with my eyes,
walk through courts and capitals
with blood on her dress
and truth in her fists.

Let her tell them this isn’t just about imaginary borders,
Neither tongues and hues,
Nor charters and treaties,
it’s about bodies.
About little girls turned to ghosts
before their first bleeding.
About wombs becoming war zones
and silence becoming law.

Because I am not collateral.
I am a nation.
I am continent.
I am memory.
I am the child that keeps dying.

And I will speak,
until she wears my skin,
and walks this land
as if it is hers to heal.

I hope,
I hope Justice wears my skin.

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Poem (c) Carolyn W. Gatonye

Image: ChatGPT remixed