Shaken not stirred

I was walking through the townships the other day, while walking, my mom’s eyes darted from left to right. Watching attentively, with a pupil disguising the flood of tears hidden behind her insecurity . She held my hand, told me to look down as we passed a group of men. Choking on the dust of grapes , holding their dignity in their hands, they stumbled before us like a disheveled crime scene. Carrying weapons untouchable, baring eyes wild with desire , hot enough to melt the ice in the grim reapers heart. I didn’t look down. I stood the way the shore does before a tsunami, breathing in the adrenaline seeping from my skin. My hands rattled the way a child shakes when being reprimanded by a teacher. This teacher held a stern expression that rooted itself into this child’s brain, one that shook her from her dreams and caused her bones to scream. I locked eyes with one of the men. I held my femininity like a flag painted by my pride, holding onto the bars of my gender. I walked past breath decaying from all that is unholy manifesting inside their stomachs, in hopes that their waste material won’t manifest into a monster that will hide into my baby sisters closet. One winked at me, my body cringed at the idea that this tower was an aging fortress shading a shack, painted with steel and carrying passengers holding ambition. He was a tree carrying daggers as branches hunching over the stem of a flower hiding in the shadows, in fear of not growing to close to the sun. In fear that it will burn from the eyes of its predecessors. I stood to the left, shading the view of my mother. I became her wind , carrying her into a paradise called equality. I shaded her fears with a positivity I’d photosynthesize from the heat burning inside of me. I didn’t cower at the sight of a lion. I stood, the way a rock does when it’s in conflict with the wind. I remembered what my grandmother told me, the one day I came to her with scars made by rough hands. Wathint' Abafazi, Wathint' Imbokodo . You strike the women ,you strike the rock.

-This is a poem rather then a short story, but it doesn't disregard my intentions of the blog-