On the day of our mock exam
Everything is a mockery
After sliding between my teeth the fat 50t coin with the fish eagle holding a fish
I mean, holding me; where its feet end your hands begin
Myself, daughter-prey to a father who takes what he can from
the water without letting it touch him
I wait with bated breaths to touch your voice from Gaborone
So heavy and safe if the call lasts
My classmates speak of your old age, say –
Rraago ke monnamogolo akere?
In that I recognize the little time we have left
Through the years I try to love a man my mother couldn’t reach
I’m holding an eagle rapturously escaping my embrace
In the end,
A couple of feathers in my hands and enough cuts to warrant a kind of leaving,
I pack my love back into heart
I let myself quiver between strangers in the back of a taxi on my way home
Telling a sister it hurts, man it hurts so bad
To love a man who won’t love you back
To kiss a man who will wipe you off his mouth
like a vice he isn’t too proud of
It is a decade and more years later
We don’t have much more time than we did back then
And the man still won’t let me in
Still won’t take my love
But loves to see me wait outside his barricaded heart
Loves to see me pine and ache
Loves to see this love waste away like our days
Phodiso Modirwa is a 29-year-old Motswana woman. She is a writer and poet with work published on The Kalahari Review, Jalada Africa, The Weight Of Years: An Afro Anthology of Creative Nonfiction, Praxis Online Magazine, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of the Botswana President’s Award-Contemporary Poetry in 2016 and recently completed her poetry residency at the Art Residency Centre in Gaborone, Botswana, where she originates and writes from.