On occasion,
I dream about drowning at least once a week
And when I drown
I always expect to choke under the pressure of the ocean
That the salt stings my eyes shut
But I am always surprised at how easily my body sinks
And how buoyant it can be under water
And it makes me think of all the slaves
Who threw themselves overboard
How they thought themselves fish before slave
Did they grow gills?
Were they grateful for the mercy of erosion
Under salt instead of whips
Did they backs bend like dolphins do?
Did they build an underwater city untouched
By brutal hands
Do they know, that I see them sometimes
The ancestors who chose water over land
And they are not bone and marrow stacked
At the bottom of the ocean
They are not corpses who chose the easy way out
I see them
They have built an underwater world from their bare hands
They laugh and bubbles exit out their mouths
Even now my family would not mourn my departure
If I were to be called by the waves
For the water has a language that some
Of us have an ear for
It is not the place of mortals to tear up
When one of us africans drown
Because to sink is to find new life
Is to be in the hands of those who control their own destiny
I know them, the water people
They call me during the night
And i don't fight anymore
I laugh with them, and live
And wake angry that oxygen can suffocate me
That I suddenly become flailing fish
That my home is not this land
That I find comfort in ocean floor
That is where my ancestors speak to me
Console me
Teach me the ways of spiritual healer
At the bottom of the sea
And it is not a dream although I wake from it
It is a reality that is bestowed upon
The xhosa shamans from birth
The western world does not have a reality like that
So they will argue it does not exist
They will be quick to diagnose my mental health
Call the act of reuniting with my own
An episode, a stress indicator
A sleeping pill prescription
These are the same people who believe in
Three day resurrection for death
But cannot fathom an african never dying
And we don’t die
We do not die.
There is life for us elsewhere.
And when we are ready
The waves will welcome us home.

Sometimes in April
When the rain pours
And makes mud of the earth.
I think of Brenda Fassie’s “Too Late For Mama”
Lingering on my sister’s vibrato
An attempt to forget that,
Once again,
A family member had lent us their back.
My three sisters and I huddled,
Under the night sky,
Singing.
A mild prayer to keep us from shivering.
A ‘let us find the mercy of a couch”
But it rained hard.
We used our limbs as umbrellas.
Laughed loud and sloppily
To hide our shame

Sometimes in April.
I think about the wet ground
How it felt against our feet.
How poverty turned into homeless.
Into needy.
Into “don’t cry, we’ll be okay soon”
Into my mother being a beggar
And us, just open mouths.
Wrestling with the pitiless relatives
Who call us out of our shared last names.

Sometimes
I think
Haven’t we lost enough
Haven’t we known an empty hand
Haven’t we despaired enough.
No shelter to speak of
Just a song to keep us warm
And the rain does not care. (Neither do the people)
It comes.
In April.