I had to strip you bare
Of all your convictions
Because you had no choice
But to wear the weight of the world
On your broken back

I watched as you cried
Rivers upon rivers in the desert
Because life had given you no choice
But to save your dying garden
With the only water that you had left

The heaviness of standing up straight
Became too much for your swollen feet;
So instead:

You stand limply with a spine crooked
From the many dry days you spend,
back curled over,
And head hanging towards the earth-simply praying for the rain

I heard them whisper the stories
About the screams they ignored
That came from other side of the door
Of the house you grew up in:

So tell me,
was it your husband or your father
That frightened you more?
(Because they never said...)

Your mother always told you that
Roses could never bloom in the desert-
But you ploughed in dusty soils anyway,
Hoping that love would grow on the pain
The rains had not washed away yet

It seems that the sun had willed itself
To burn down everything that you owned-
So with calloused and cracked hands
You dug deeper into the ground
In search of anything to put the fires out

I heard you lamenting for rain
In that dischorded voice of yours;
But no matter how many tears you wept
Or however many prayers that you sent,
They were just never enough
To make flowers bud in the desert.

By: Lulwama K. Mulalu