Cold Butterfly

Everything we have was given by a taking hand

My father’s glazed eyes fail to hide mother’s biopsy results
Her winter song’s in her cocktail of herbs and wet soil-like
palm reaching for the miracle man’s in the small screen
Repeat after me. All the pain in my body, all the evil spirits…
Her gentian violet-painted lips labour for the litany
Emollient words falling off like broken hair or lurid leaves
in still wind springing from my little sisters’ unjaded hearts
Mine is a prism splitting the little light left in the lowering lantern
into bloodlines that carried the curses bequeathed to the best
amongst us- divine daughters who walk over scorching coals
for the salvation of our souls before we know of struggle or slogan
Before a soreness is stirred at the sight of their callused hands
and the seared soles of their feet
When our clenched fists hold beautiful gifts like chrysalises
before the cycle is mixed up in our youthful motley-minded moxie.

By Dzikamayi Chando

Dzikamayi Chando writes from Gweru, Zimbabwe. He vacillates between the meaninglessness of life and the purpose of life- reading and sometimes writing inbetween. You can connect with him on Twitter @dzikamayic.