(for Ambronese)

    A thousand-people loving me could

    not undo the onion-layers of damage

    done of my tribe not loving me back

    and holding me close and cherishing

    me and me clinging onto them for my

    lifetime. All my life those in-the-family

    way have been a disabling vortex.

    Flush with flux. Determined with

    their own crooked little hearts. Still, to

    this day, these ghosts have to be

    forgiven. Oh, perhaps they’re giving.

    Their children brave, bright and

    resilient. Salty-licked, stars every one. 

Burning suns.

    Northern Americas every single

    one. They are holistic winners. Sophisticates.

    Wealthy pioneers. They’re just,

    but they’re missing something.

    They’re missing the blank slate

    of forest-schooled-me. I live in

    the same way the sea lives. I have

    the exact perspective of a piece

    of driftwood on the divine beach.

You’re not one of us, they sing in unison.

    Can’t get that cartoon tune of hurt

    out of the inside of my head. There’s

    just no love. No forgiveness. I’m

    damned if I do and damned if I don’t.

    You’ll survive, someone screams

    in the silence of my bedroom where

    I’m dreaming of Parisian rooftops.

    I watch cooking shows on television

    until the early hours of the morning.

Thinking of nothing. Thinking of everything.

    And this flux, this inscrutable vortex,

    whatever ‘it’ is, I blame the name-

    and-shame game of madness. It loiters

    like a vagrant. I give love my all

    but it is not enough. I yearn for it.

For its unfolding spring harvest and bounty but still,

    But still, they shout and point and stare.

    You’re not one of sacred us. This trust.

    Not quite enough. Not enough

    meat to me. I am posed though.

    Half of all-whole-me expected

this.

Danced to this cartoon all my life. All my life.

ABIGAIL GEORGE is a South African blogger, poet, short story writer, and aspirant young adult novelist. She briefly studied film and television production at the Newtown Film and Television School in Johannesburg. She has been published in various anthologies, numerous times in print in South Africa, and online in e-zines based in Australia, Finland, the UK, the United States, India and Ireland and across Africa from Istanbul, Turkey to Nigeria.