I didn’t see the dying, in the smiles you dropped so casually,
In the tears you sniffed away, when clouds made you blue;
Your eyes flitted past my face, like butterflies fleeing rain…
How can death be so stealthy, spring so bitter-sweet,
To mask the tang of dying, in buds of evergreen?
I never felt the leaving, it seemed like seasons waning,
The edge of the rainbow, fading, the lives we’re living, changing.
That day we sat in sunset, our fingers threaded fast,
We glimpsed the world turning, two watchers firmly grasped.
Grey shadows grew with sunset, leaning against your heaving chest,
And I heard the click of prayer beads, as they bid you rise and leave.
You looked at me with sunshine, a love undimmed with time,
Then you slowly lay beside me, warmth trickling from your eyes.
I finally saw the dying, in the ghosts you breathed out at last.
I had to let you leave me, though the sky broke with my cries.
I sit at my empty table, gap-toothed grief abounds
Some days I fill with sunshine, but the rain won’t leave my side.
Beverley Ann Abrahams is a Zimbabwean poet and short story writer, a teacher of English for 40 years, and an activist against gender-based violence with DD4P, Daughter Destined For Purpose, a UK based charity organisation in Zimbabwe.. She has been published in three anthologies of international poets and one regional anthology of female human rights defenders. She is published in three anthologies of African short stories; and was second runner-up for the Kendeka prize for African Literature in 2022. In 2024 she was short-listed for the inaugural Carnelian Heart (UK) short story prize and the Intwasa Yvonne Vera Award. In December 2024, her poem “Broken Teeth” (Ipikai issue 5) was published in “Dambudzo Marechera At The Old Fire Station” by Oxford Brookes University.
FB@Beverley Ann
X@Bevy262
Insta@Beverley Abrahams
LinkedIn@Beverley Abrahams