another day goes by, and the rubble piles,
the rising dust settles on wet bones yet to dry,
the hunger strikes on sinking stomachs,
the rift remains unfilled, graves unmarked,
and some heavy laden with names.
still, you say you are not getting involved.
the truth is you and I
know liberation is the goal.
in muting yourself, you silence
the voices under the ruins.
in distancing yourself,
you shy away from clothing humanity.
you say you are not getting involved
but already are, for it is your duty
to treat others as worthy as yourself.
how many more must it take,
who is allowed to breathe?
some are deemed more worthy,
yet silence in the face of injustice
is betrayal.
Death. Wounding. Displacement.
Sudan. Congo. Somalia. Mali.
Burkina Faso. Niger. Palestine
And.
And.
And.
Rutendo Chichaya is a Zimbabwean writer, poet, and book review blogger. She is the winner of the 2023 ShonaReads Zimbabwe Speculative Fiction Competition and has been nominated for the Intwasa Short Story Prize (2020), the Hamwe Short Story Contest (2021), and her blog for the Afrobloggers Award (2021). Her work appears in Intwasa Short Stories: Volume One, The One Poem Anthology: Survivor’s Edition, Ipikai Poetry Journal, Words Remember: Poems and Stories from Zimbabwe and the USA, Tesserae: A Mosaic of Poems by Zimbabwean Women, The Kalahari Review, Harare Review of Books, The African Feminist Anthology: Women’s Tales, Brittle Paper, The Makings of Revolutionary Hope and African Ghost Stories. Rutendo hosts Ihwi, a podcast that documents the experiences of creatives.
