Posted in Mind Of The Lady

This Time

Posted on by Mind Of The Writer

“So what then do we say of all these things, the past carries our story in the bookshelves I often revisit. What a tale of love and woe.” A poet’s proverb.

I greet the ocean in the name of love, gratitude, and the stories I have written at her feet.

I exhale the tragedy of being a poet who has served joy and pain and all things in between, and then, I kindly ask my heart to be still.

“A lot must be said tonight, so find your peace.” I tell her.

Breathe. And so I proceed.

“We are on the other side of healing, this time, things must be different”

But my heart, she asks questions, restless as the ocean in front of us. She asks,

“Owner, if we could live that story again, what would we do this time?”

Breathe.

“This time, I would tell him I wanted him sooner. If I knew our time had this end, i’d have him sooner.

This time I would state my intentions clearly. I was love meant to be whole heartedly embraced. Not simply experienced. I was love asking to be steadfast and full. I am not a half love.”

This time, I would not let him touch me. The heart often learns to forget, but the body always remembers. And sometimes, remembering is the worst part.

I would drink coffee instead, the tea became bitter.

This time, I would let God love him alone. Despite His insistence, mine was not necessary.

This time, I would have left the first time.

I would have healed quicker. Forgiven faster. Forgiven myself completely.

I’d respect your decision to not love me the way I asked to be loved, and respected myself more by staying away after.

This time? I’d remember friendship does not seek to hurt it’s friend. I’d stop calling you by a name you are not.

This time, I would still call you friend, because i’d be lying if I said you are not.

This time, i’d love and leave you. Not just love you.

This time, there would not be a you.”

Breathe.

Selah.

This time, my heart is still. She knows the battles it took to get here. To grab healing by the neck and call it mine. She wears her battle scars so beautifully.

This time, after you, I will say ‘love’ without hearing your name. This time I will love myself it will bring God tears of joy. I will be a manifestation of every love story God wrote in me.

More importantly,

this time,

I will choose me.

Every. Damn. Time.

And it will be glorious.

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Posted in Mind Of The Lady

Thinking Outside the Box

Posted on by Mind Of The Writer

We sit on that old porch

Morning about to make an appearance.

Throats raspy from lack of sleep on my side,

And cheap brown liquor on yours.

I kiss the last of the skies goodbye, and say a prayer of thanks to them for staying so long.

The air is thick with the scent of cigarettes and lemon from the tea I’ve been drinking.

You look at me

And smile before saying

“Tell me what you are thinking about right now.”

“Nothing.” I respond.

You roll your eyes, lick your bottom lip before gently wiping the residue from it off with your finger.

I look away, and then hear you say,

“Think of something.

Matter of fact, think outside the box.”

You move to the edge of that dusty old chair, place that 7th glass of even dustier scotch by your worn out boots.

You stare at me,

You really stare at me,

And smile, probing me to think

Out loud.

I look, I say a prayer of thanks,

For everything and yet nothing

And one for forgiveness,

I’ll need it later.

I exhale.

“I think about a time when this will end,

You know? This. These moments, and all those that have already passed and those that are yet to come before passing too.

I think about a time you see the human in me,

Before seeing the monster in me.

I think about whether or not those two are different at all.

I am thinking about how, approximately 47 times tonight,

I’ve looked at you and swore this is how love looks like.

I am thinking about how that scares me.

To know love means to know you might lose it.

I am thinking how painful it might feel to lose it.

I am thinking about how fast I will say ‘yes’ when-

If you ever ask me to marry you.

And how embarrassing the speed will be.

How I will fall down to my knees to you, to look you eye-to-eye,

As equals,

To let you know even when you are down I will be in the pit with you,

Never once leaving you alone. But never letting you remain there.

I am thinking about the prayer I will say.

How it will never stop.

But I also think of the times you will get tired of me.

Or the times I will forget I love you the way I do right now.

Where I see you as a stranger, and not my very best friend.

I think about how stupid of me that will be.

Then I think about how nothing can take you away from me.

And whatever dares to?

May it have ulcers.”

You laugh,

I pause.

You chuckle, that nervous one when I compliment you and you don’t know what else to do.

You do that. A lot.

Your heart is still learning to understand my love, and it’s beautiful.

“Go on, mi Cielito.” You urge.

Pause.

“You are to me, what heaven is to God.

Home.”

Pause.

You look at me, you really look at me.

Pause.

“My body wants nothing more than to show you heaven exists.” I add quietly, looking away.

Pause.

You move to the edge of the chair,

And then you kneel. In front of me.

“How will you do that?”

Pause

That prayer of forgiveness.

Another prayer of thanks,

A prayer,

A prayer.

“Marry me,

And you’ll see.”

You chuckle,

once more.

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Posted in ART FOR THE HEART, Mind Of The Lady

The Silence

Posted on by Mind Of The Writer

I watch the people.

I watch the people retweet “woke posts”.

Watch them pin their favourite borrowed thoughts.

I watch them call this fighting for the cause.

I remain silent. But I am always watching,

I watch the people put up Instagram stories of their revelations

In the name of starting a conversation.

I watch the same people walk away from conversations before it even starts.

I watch them brush it under, “it’s not even worth it.”

I watch them.

I watch myself be them.

But some days I cannot bring myself to be anything other than silent.

I grew up saying,

“Someday I will die for a cause. I will fight for your people.”

I held my fist in the air, and promised God I meant it.

Today, as I watch the people, silent,

I’ve lost sight of what that cause even is.

I wonder if they have too.

They don’t fight the problem. They fight each other.

I remain silent in spaces where they want me to be loud.

But I promise you, I hear them.

It is the most ignorant who are the loudest.

but often, the most cowardly who are silent.

And I watch how loud leads.

and silence yields.

I watch,

Watch myself draw deeper away from the people,

Even when all I want to do is fight for the people.

But the people I tell you,

The people have forgotten what it means to fight for something.

The people only ever want to fight.

The people argue, and call that fighting.

The people talk, but never listen.

The people say they want change; no.

The people are angry.

The people want to stay angry.

Change means changing.

The people do not want to be told to change.

They fight each other on days when they really should fight for each other.

And I watch.

How we are truly a family.

Where greed is passed around the dinner table,

And self-hate is our only portion.

We say grace to a god of division that we created,

And silence the God of Love we curse.

Maybe that is why we think He is silent.

And I watch.

Watch myself turn away

Walk away from the bickering.

The tearing down instead of the lifting up.

I watch.

Because you see, speaking only works when people are listening.

No one is listening.

I’ve seen it.

How sometimes even with the most beautiful intentions,

brings swift destruction.

Instead we fight without cause.

We fight with hate.

Fighting, has become the place love goes to die.

And all we do is standby and watch.

 

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Posted in ART FOR THE HEART, Mind Of The Lady

She’s A Winter Coat

Posted on by Mind Of The Writer

Winter has come.
And my baby is leaving,
She’s walking out the door for the fifth time.
I convince myself it’s only been five times. Accepting it could be more would show just how good she is at quitting
Or just how easy I make it to quit.
It’s cold today.
She takes heat with her as though she was the very essence of warmth,
The absence of darkness
Her light a fire. She always kept me burning but now,
She’s gone.
Winter has come.
She said she’s not coming back. Not this time. She can’t do this anymore. Can’t do us anymore.
I hate that this time I believe her. But I know she’ll be back.
She knows I get cold. Without her.
She knows I hate winter. The way it comes in gently, settling above us before making a home out of us. The way it stills me. Has my blood flow at a halt. Has my body in surrender. Vulnerable. So defenseless the only way out is to come in.
And maybe that’s the thing.
Inside, myself it’s dark here.
The darkness is loud and I’m too silent to still it.
She is my heart’s winter coat,
The music of her warmth silencing the voices that taunt me.
My monsters call her friend.
She calls them defeated.
She’s a Winter coat. Protects me from the winter. Protects me from the cold. Protects me from me.
But that’s all she can ever be.
A beautiful winter coat, to entangle myself in.  Because seasons change. The flowers blossom,
The greenery grows in places tears flowed fiercely.
And after,
I turn to her and see Summer.
And then she leaves. She walks away. Again.
Because the thing about a winter coat
Is you’ll embrace it, love it and appreciate it when it’s cold.
But alas,
You’ll drop it the moment the warmth suffocates you. Threatens to make a home in you. And she’ll feel my reluctance. My rejection.
And that’s when she’ll leave. And I’ll let her. Remove her until I need her again.
Until winter comes again.

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Posted in Mind Of The Lady

KuLit by Jacobina – (Psalm Tukwafa)

Posted on by Mind Of The Writer

KuLit there by you,
KuLit by the way you carry success like it’s nothing,
Turn nothing into something
And make gold out of everything.
KuLit there by you,
KuLit by the way the power of life and death lies in your tongue,
And yet your brooding silence accompanied by those facial expressions are weapons of mass destruction.
But still,
KuLit there by you
KuLit there by everything you do.
KuLit by your laugh that makes me believe God must have an amazing sense of humor,
By the way you find yourself the most entertaining person you know.
The way you can spend hours in your own beauty and still can’t get enough of it. The world has to settle for sharing you with you,
And more importantly with God, and quite frankly I’m jealous.
KuLit in the way you sing, the way I know angels harmonise with you and marvel at your praise and worship.
You are everything Eden should have been. Divine, beautiful, fruitful and doused in the unending presence of God.
You are what poems are made of,
And yet altogether Poetry.
You are love,
Even on days when the world tries to convince you you aren’t
You are strength and I fear for any weapon that thinks it can prosper against you.
KuLit there by you.
KuLit there by Jacobina. Thank you for getting this far.
KuLit there by the fact that I’m just going to stop the poem here and get to the point because I know you hate long poems and cliché gestures.
Happy birthday sweet caramel banana oshikandela lemon rice cakes.
You are the art to my heart.
Have a blessed birthday.

A birthday tribute to my Proverbs 31 sister.

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Posted in Mind Of The Lady

These Hands

Posted on by Mind Of The Writer

These hands have held together families,

spreading glue over broken pieces of family relationships,

hoping it will seep into the cracks,

and call itself healing.

These hands have prepared meals,

as offerings of forgiveness when words couldn’t rise to the occasion.

These hands, these skinny nimble hands,

that get so cold, so quickly, have wrapped themselves around souls,

releasing fire from a furnace burning,

inextinguishable,

hoping to feel warmth in return

Simply trying to bring warmth in a world where winter never pauses.

These hands have always been good at constructing,

creating art and poetry.

Turning people into art,

turning love into poetry.

These hands have turned my heart into an instrument, and have turned the string of my heart into the kinds of symphonies that turn peasants into poets.

My hands have the kind of magic to turn your lies into rhythm .

Heartbreak into stories,

my tragedies into remedies.

These hands that caught tears in the middle of prayer,

and yet always had the strength to lift themselves to praise.

These hands,

my God these hands,

have been carved with the lifetimes of my lineage.

The map of where I came from, where I’ve been,

where I am going,

and where I can always return to.

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Posted in Mind Of The Lady

On Turning 21

Posted on by Mind Of The Writer

On turning 21,

I found love.

And it was glorious.

I found gentleness, and as a gift to myself,

I bathed in it.

I found softness within myself. Soft love, soft breath and soft heartbeats.

And I deserve to treat myself accordingly,

On turning 21,

I remembered all the times I wasn’t.

I play my life back, like my favourite book,

unfolding the doggy flags,

hands over the tear stains, reading my favourite pages,

the ones that made me feel most heroic, most vulnerable,

That made me feel.

The ones where I cried,

and laughed,

and laughed at my crying,

only to cry once more.

I have lived through the most beautiful stories

and conquered through the most heartbreaking tragedies,

all in the name of poetry.

All in the name of growth.

On turning 21,

I remember that I have loved because I am made of Love.

I have been hurt, and I have hurt people I claimed to care about.

On some nights, the demons of these memories won’t easily let me sleep.

But self-forgiveness is my Bible, and I am a firm meditator

I have been broken,

screamed as I cut the pain out of me.

I shattered, and on some nights I still hear the melody.

But my healing, my God, it is so beautiful.

It’s magic.

On turning 21,

I remember I am magic.

I am art, my own favourite poem.

On turning 21 I remember every time I breathe, love flows from my lungs.

Today,

I woke up and knelt.

No pretense,

with tears of joy dripping from my temple.

With praises of thanks that shook me to the very core.

On turning 21,

I heard Love say,

“Nana, on this day I made you. Rejoice, for I am glad in it.”

I asked God, on turning 21,

if truly He could bless me more than he already has,

Love said,

“You have no idea”