It’s another day of festivities-
Or whatever you call a gathering of crows around a carcass.
A chicken glazed in scarlet sauce lies unmoving on a golden platter.
But it’s not the only dead thing here today,
The difference is, the others still accommodate oxygen in nostrils.
Uncle smiles at my younger sister, and her face morphs into an artwork
Of unrefined agony, a contorted sculpture of poorly masked shame.
I have a good idea of the unspeakable things running through her teenage mind.
Memories of muffled screams, and unzipped trousers in darkened rooms;
Family has an evil twin called incest, who dwells in alcoves of lust.
He sleeps beneath buried piles of silenced anguish and pain,
And he rears his ugly head, on holidays when uncle returns home.
Mama smiles at father’s face, and he stares back with no expression-
for he dwells behind bars of tempered glass, in a frozen portrait.
A feeble attempt by the bereaved to remember a pillar of strength;
Sometimes I wonder if things would change, if only he were still with us.
This poem was published in the January 2022 Edition of the WSA Magazine
Read – Flowers – A Poem by Mayeso Grace Mazengera, Malawi
