Chabota Sibuku

Two streams marathon down my cheeks
as a stench of failure snatches wisps of Oxygen
from my lungs.
How do I count
episodes of laughter without running
into moments that rip my smile into morsels?
How do I laugh
without my throat shredding my voice into
debris?
Chunks of myself are sheathed in father’s chest.
Whatever he says wriggles my head into
a node—see what I meant
when I said that I own a spec of myself?
Here, we hide problems under our skin
and film the air with silence. We
freeze a little—
We learn how to nestle dragons in our belly
instead of a cluster of butterflies.
We waltz through earth laid with stubborn
dust that chock the better of our ego—
forgetting the fragile feather we’ve become.