Alysia Harris "Cab Rides and The Morning After"

She

Home

I promised myself that I would run as far away from home as possible

I was Buddha in search of nirvana

And home was purgatory

So I immersed myself into the belly of a city that tried to spit me out

That is where I met you

Dark, frightening, shrivelled like a prune on the inside

Macho, well dressed and stern on the outside

You were my broken mirror

Reflecting to  me pieces of myself

What I didn’t expect was how your eyes

Deep and dark

Were a spyglass into the world I was trying to escape

When I looked into them I didn’t expect to see home

Staring back at me with a menacing smile

Almost as if it would snarl at me and spit out in a malignant voice a harrowing

“gotcha”

Poem by Thobeka "TBK" Msane

We lay on the remains of our hearts 
Smeared in the little blood we could salvage
Waiting while they continue to sow what we will reap…
They sow what we will reap…

Our hearts were far too pure to slave away and create a nest
that would breed such deadly thorns
intent on hurting what only has nurturing intentions…

So here we lay after the latest battle 
So accustomed to the wreckage 
We have the will to numb our bruises and salvage 
what is left of our hearts… 

Smeared in the remains…
Remains of the hope that one day 
a brave soldier will walk by 
while we lay here 
and be the one 
to find and restore 
the pieces of our lonely broken hearts…

"

- Thobeka “TBK” Msane

The darkest thing about our skin tone is not the pigment but the dark shackles that come with it

 

What we cannot say in words our bodies will say for us

This is how we have come to communicate our pain:

Red lipstick on cigarette butts

Lips interlocked with strangers

Hips swaying to music our souls never dance to

Sandwich between foreign sheets

Loud slurs of “get me another drink”

Feet a tangled mess tripping over each other.

Then at three am, under skies black as our skin,

when the music goes off

and the crowd has thinned:

Deep rumbling cries,

Uncontrollable tears.