We saddled the children in the mines,

To excavate the lavish reserves,

For the phones that we designed,

Shall I declare this place free?

Harsh and abandoned, like the breezing wind,

Where jagged earth has torn the skin of our palms,

In the coldness of June, all too bitter a month,

Howling and sobbing,

All mourning

The untimely passing

Of their African fathers.

Because they said, no woman can eat from the coconut tree,

That she must be fed by the cassava roots,

And whoever eats from the coconut tree, must be a man,

With my own face being a forgettable one,

Would it be any different,

If I wore a mask over it?

As few would bother to notice,

For us that had the mouths,

That have spoken many times before,

And often of things not proud,

Why did we stay tacit?

On the train, down to Mombasa,

Sat a child, alone and afraid,

Is the story the people say,

Of how the war began.

In the land of the dead,

A conversation was afoot,

Harrowing and haunting,

The beasts began to speak.

Even the snores of octogenarians, or tip-tap of hackers,

Or the knocks of neighbors, or the sirens of chaos,

Silently compared to the beating hearts of lovers,

Moments away from a first kiss.

The long and short of this poem is a story that can only,

Be understood by a person of curious mind and heart,

With a toned skin, and backed by an army of books,

And with the memory of fairy tales told,

To have lived a life like mine,

And now see it all up in flame

I pray that my soul gets to heaven on a ship,

For I wish to smell the salty seas.

Something is afoot, something is darkening,

With certainty - I have been wronged,

So, in my memoirs,

I hope to be happy with the things I’ve been,

I want it all, sorry,

I’ve been wrong all along,

I don’t even want to be seen.