Each time I get here, the mantra breaks
into a festival of laughter.
Mother said our glulam house is like us;
a construction of woods & glues,
but we are bodies and bricks
raising a home where each body is a pillar of flaws,
conjoined with love, yelling, rules & laughter.
Each time she says, home is a fireplace that needs no fire.
Each of us holding its flames
in our lungs, like jars storing every ooze,
where every cold weather draws warmth
& it warms our bodies; the love,
the yelling, the rules & the laughter.
Yesterday, the carpenter’s hammer hit
the hard headed nail with deafening sound on the ceiling
like father’s bass voice that mends our goofs,
it mended the roof.
Father says love is in the loud bang,
the yelling and the hard rules.
This time, I leave the glulam house again,
ablaze with smiles, the fire place
staring at me, & home becomes a mantra,
a longing, and a rule to return with laughter.
Read – Yearning – A Poem by Rehema Kasanga, Zambia
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