every night after safia’s death,
mother’s dialect turns a household of lunatics
& in the attic are memories hanging on cobwebs & father’s
prison letters from that distant city i can’t recall,
i heard that grief is hereditary
but mine is an anonymous donor from a sperm bank
so, each day the sun beams, i touch its skin hoping it is
contagious but it leaves me stranded because the night always
eavesdrops on our conversations
i carved my surname on the windowsill because i am
on the brink of falling out like pebbles hurled into
the waves & legacy can’t just fade out,
i mean i am bitter like the tales mother won’t tell me, i mean
silence hovers the house like a watch guard, the rooftop shares of
our turbulence, it bed wets on us anytime the sky’s bladder
disagrees
one day after coming back from the White-owned mines that left
my eyes sunken & my skin rugged like a butcher’s slab,
i learnt mother had a stroke but she said she
only went limp with memories too sweet, she can’t hold:
three months later, she went somewhere & i packed my broken parts
in a luggage, flag down that cab going the seaport way,
here i am, a stowaway in dark corners of an abandoned ship
on a deserted island . . .
