By Carolyne Afroetry
I wailed like a heart broken cloud.
My spirit crashed.
I felt like the scraps devoured
by vultures.
Condom wrappers that artistically
painted the street corners
commiserated with my plight.
Pity became my most
cherished groom.
Hurricane of tears formed
around my eyes.
I withered like a flower.
Hope faded like water paint.
My heart sunk to the depth
of the Mariana trench.
Thoughts wandered through
distant lands.
I hovered like a chopper.
Gravitational pull wasn’t
strong enough to hold me.
I felt a thousand galaxies
exploding inside my body.
Meteorite tributaries of fire
coursed through my veins.
Emotions were replaced by
low humidity.
My watering hole dried up
so fast in the presence
of inner turmoil.
The tadoba lamp seated
seductively on my table blinked ferociously as the wind
sent blows to my weathered
and beaten door-
Splintered on the edges;
groaning at the hinges.
There were no shimmering
stars to illuminate the dark.
I was up on the singles market again.
Branded and lined on life’s auction
block- “Single and searching”
Grandfather’s clock chimed
The night visited my bed like
an old lover.
Hid my flaws and the scars
burned onto my flesh.
Scabs created by stab wounds
became invisible.
The trees took the form of charcoal.
City neon lights ebbed
to a mere inkling.
The mischievous moon played peek-a-boo like a child weaving
in and out of the
radiant breast of Heaven.
Casting long, deep shadows
far down the trail that once
paid homage to us.
Darkness sucked the glowing
marrow from Mabira forest’s
camp fires.
Plucked the stars from the skyline
like a bird plucking its feathers
for the nesting season.
I thought that the moon blushed
only in the presence of you.
I thought that it was the dawn of
the apocalypse.
I thought that pleasure only resided
on the southern hemisphere of you.
I thought I couldn’t live without you.
I was wrong you see…
Reality was a bitter pill to swallow.
I imbibed truth.
Seasons came; seasons went.
I shifted from sad memories like
tectonic plates.
Sun plunged into the ground and thoughts of you mired in a
mangrove swamp.
I retired to a paradise of me.
The earth was still spinning
on its axis.
Earth still rotated the sun in
an elliptical orbit.
Nights were longer.
Days got better.
The only thing that had
changed was
my heart’s address.
I don’t love you too.
-The Unapologetic Poet
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