Freefalling from wombs since birth,
Spiraling wildly out of this unwinding ball of wool
That shivers at the feet of blind grandmothers
and the same grip of horrors that peels their eyes at dawn,
and stitches them back together again before sunrise
The children fell in the well,
And we threw in enough rope for them to hang themselves,
And when they drowned, we drew water one last time,
Covered it and called the mass grave ‘home’
Also by this poet:
Mbonisi Zikhali comes from Makokoba, Bulawayo, Zimbabwe. He is a spoken-word artist, story-teller, youth mentor and grassroots community organizer. His stage name is Zomkhonto, which happens to be his bloodline’s totem. He is currently based in Canada.