I can’t tell you about loss,
I have never seen her face.
My mind is a puzzle refusing to be completed:
dry wells of tears / empty faces
staring /
hands that held nothing
but pity.
Oh, and that call that broke the silence,
shattering my heart into pints of
anger despair disbelief sadness.
A stupefied emptiness colourless in its menace.
A sadness so deep it put the night to shame.
I dread the tremor of ringtones
The dark side of a buzz may be a mother dying,
fading into nothingness in your absence.
Grief is that smirking grin on the face of God
crushing your dreams under the foot
of his omniscient wisdom.
I don’t want to go to heaven.
I long to see my mother.
Wesley Macheso
Wesley Macheso is a Malawian writer currently reading for his PhD in English Studies at Stellenbosch University. He teaches literature at the University of Malawi to survive and he writes to live. His short story “This Land is Mine” is published in Water: new short story fiction from Africa (2016). He won the 2015 Peer Gynt Literary Award in Malawi for his children’s book Akuzike and the Gods (2017). Some of his poems are anthologised in Wreaths for a Wayfarer (2020). His work can be read online on African Writer, Brittle Paper, Storymoja, The Kalahari Review, and Agbowo magazines. He edits for www.africanwriter.com and www.africainwords.com
This entry appeared in The Memory Issue
Photo by Download a pic Donate a buck! ^ from Pexels