I dream in the accent of my mother
I dream in the accent of my mother,
and her mother
Xhosa buoyant against the folding current
crafting broken narratives along
my tongues.
And my body is beginning to grow weary,
my breasts,
wishing to shed themselves
of the strength needed to raise a daughter.
I've been a woman
for far too long.
As with my grandmother,
And her mother
Two stories could be told
1. Of the child which blooms, cradled in my mother-cocoon, when she is born she will be a woman first.
2. Of the fear.
I crave her release
From the bounds of womanhood
And the slits of blackness
For she is only
Only a little bit trapped,
Only a little but wounded,
Only a little bit woman
I yearn for her to be less
So that her eyes may see more
And I, Raised by the orbs of tar-eyed men
With tear-silked lashes
that for just a moment
convey a small sort of encapsulating gospel
in darkness
Have no desire to escape myself
But she is,
More than I have ever been,
Closer than any woman before.
Fore, she lays in the ditches between freedom’s gale
And with the swell of my chest
Inside me lays,
Inside me, a girl
Ghost-mold
of a thousand universes
Beneath the nook
of my breasts
There, entwined
in sun-adorned spiderwebs,
A girl
A woman
My daughters
I will raise her to choose freedom
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