Stumbling across my war-torn soulscape;
Bombed buildings of faded dreams, streets paved with craters of broken vows and dismembered dolls of naiveté.
It’s always midday here. The blazing sun lights up everything in stark relief. There’s nowhere to hide.
The shadows hide other spectres, crouching in pain,
For even my ghost gave up it’s ghost.
I inherited this scorched parcel of earth from my mother and she from hers and so on,
All the way to when the first woman learnt to be stoic, to drudge along. Make sure the children were fed, whatever it took,
A beating or two, a rape or two, a war or two.
Put one step in front of another even as fell winds swept away our sons and lovers.
I counted on the unaccountable. Men who tore themselves off my still throbbing body to defend and protect distant lands not theirs.
There they sowed hate and harvested bodies.
Bloodlust is so much more potent than any other.
Like my mother didn’t teach me what she didn’t know,
How hide a few seeds, how to retain some moisture. How to grow something that was mine alone.
I never taught my sons that it is better to grow a plant, a relationship, a home.
So they left to reave, loot and plunder a bit of land from a brother-enemy.
And I, empty of womb, wander clutching at the tattered edges of my sanity, a loin cloth to cover my many failures.