By: Takudzwa Mudiwa
For the longest time I was taught
Certain shadows should stay in the darkness.
I have spent far too long trying to make sense of what this is, trying to merge the pieces together trying to love my circumstances.
I have realised I am the closest thing to nature.
The sun absorbs me and becomes darkness, you look up at me in cold breeze and get lost in my stars.
Constellations weaving together revealing my ancestors.
I have began to believe that whenever a shooting star happens it’s my people celebrating – singing of high praises and sweet goodbyes.
You are yesterday’s “I got through it”
Today’s “sunset”
Tomorrow’s “sunrise”
Ten years ago you were the apology.
At this moment in time you are thunder and lighting.
You have not done all this inhaling and exhaling to be timid. You are the night sky and everything in it. The victory within your skin is a melody. An arrangement of notes that only a whole orchestra full of rich heavy brass tones fighting with the whisper of a trembling harp could fathom.
Why tame our feathers when we can fly.
Expanding our wings so they are as big as our dreams.
There’s no need to apologise because I have found comfort within the shadows.
And years ago what looked like a flicker is now an explosion.
I have reveled in the shade and all it’s spirits I have danced on tiptoes with them till the early mornings – hid them in between my ribcage.
Letting them savage every bit of my heart that’s left until my lungs were crying out with mercy, until they had came way too familiar with the loss of air.
Here I am now
I have spent far too long sitting outside the door, collecting my fears and storing them beneath the welcome mat.
Well I am dusting my feet off, leave the door behind me open. I have no fear.
There I will speak it into existence,
Until I can watch from a distance a whole house full of regrets collapse”
