You have heard the horror
of what will follow
scoured the literature
hoping to be pacified
you count the pennies
going down the drain
for nothing;
the debilitating pain
never ending yet something
says nothing exceeds this loss.
the weeks, if gathered
are a lifetime
of shape shifting
of being grounded for days
helpless:
missed parties, missed travel,
missed work, missed school.
the choice of what colour
clothes to wear –
the fear of staining
has filled your wardrobe
with black things, they conceal
the many accidents well.
You must suffer
the stones of a disappointed womb;
pounding you to exhaustion
month in month out
since you were thirteen;
Perhaps the womb is hopeful
ignoring your heart
the heart that sees
no probability; it is treacherous, this thing
you want to rip it and temporarily lay
it aside for a moment,
temporarily as the heart whispers
“You may need this thing,
you never know.”
the pennies, the pain, the fear,
you’ve lost count of the many
sleepless nights,
you secretly pray
for the hot flashes to begin.
Also by this poet:
Batsirai Chigama (Zimbabwe) is a performer, poet, literary activist, and social commentator. City of Asylum described her work as “surprising, shocking, and skillfully deliberate work,” and “a breath-taking embodiment of grief.”
Chigama’s debut collection, “Gather The Children,” won Outstanding First Creative Published Book at the National Arts Merit Awards in 2019. In the same year she was an honorary fellow at the International Writing Programme (IWP) at Iowa University. In 2021 she released her second poetry collection which won the NAMA Outstanding Poetry Book Award in 2022.
Batsirai is passionate about providing alternative narratives to those featured in mainstream media and her work with young people has taken her as far as Denmark and USA, performing and facilitating creative writing and spoken word workshops.