That Gut Wrenching Poetry

it was the feeling i despised, really.but i’m a living person. how could i go without food?

it’s as though i forgot too soon. not forgot. forgotten would have meant having no memory of other lips on mine — their texture, their warmth, the breath i steal. it would have meant not knowing the sound of my name from a deep voice, whispered, murmured,…

i’m mesmerized by my own pain and it’s almost funny how the man i keep my eyes chained to, can marry, have children, build a life in front of me, and still leave me pining after the shadow he never offered. he only ever wanted the girl next door, untouched

as it stands, my time spent on earth is riddled with cowardice. the lack thereof takes its little bites, but when i’m not lazy, i’d rather crawl back to my mama’s house — the government house, yes. if i wasn’t told to school, i wouldn’t know how to write…

pretty things tell others to become pretty. and the world revolves around the loudest voice. how bad. tell me, where i should’ve inherited teaching my eyes to change colour. change… to say the things my mouth wouldn’t say and keep those leaving my life. i…

i’m embarrassed. they never told stories about the graveyard. the dead don’t either. if my heart follows that tradition, then i’m a girl coming of age, a maiden. who’s seen me naked?

one day — two ordinary words, yet they’ve built a home inside my world. there was a one day when i was a little girl, when another child had a doll she refused to lend me. i thought, one day, my papa would take me to school in his brand-new car. one day,…

i’m not a beggar. i never wanted to beg, but my lover changed midway. suddenly, his days became things i had to chase just to know about. my voice—one that never went out naked—has now grown thick skin just to survive the shame of going unanswered. this is

the many times i wanted stupid to leave me. my man left me. he can’t be my man. so that man left me. but really, it isn’t leaving, if the inside of his house never knew my touch. it’s like, if i wanted to walk to town, and it’s hot outside, but i want to…

selfish must have had a name in the past—the starving child, the struggling artist, the twenty-year-old curious about sex, or maybe just the world where people killed each other, calling god differently in their languages. this is the fault of the world.…