Dear West
Africa is wearing your clothes,
Your skin is layered on every inch of her body,
With ramblings of beautiful patchworks, it itches.
She loves you in pursuit of your riches
Clothes stenched in your sweat
Reeking of a history etched in her bone,
Still loving.
It’s written on her daughters’ skin.
In caramel and thick chocolate paste on their bodies,
The map of your authority arches the horizon of her eyes.
They don’t know you,
Her children.
You are simply the west.
Even though west should have been
Liberia, Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana or Guinea.
No. West is not what west would have or should have been,
If you had not clothed her.
West is far reaching to the ultimate pursuit.
It is at the centre of your table.
Where you cut her up to pieces.
Submitted her to borders and wrote her constitutions.
West is the desire that creeps into her soul
When she sees the vision you created at your table.
Africa is bleeding for you.
Even after the wars are over; her scars conceive pain.
Stuck in the battle of loving you, needing you.
Her struggle hidden in your clothing,
still loving.
Drenched in prayers flaming to prophets and gods,
She will never have the opportunity to encounter in purity;
She will never have the courage to love them truthfully,
In obedience to the rules of your table.
She knows to dig is to rise
But her feet sink in your landmines,
Still loving, needing you, and hoping.
Begging you to let go and let her love you.
Freely permit you to undress her,
Have her and cloth her to your pleasing,
Still loving.
Wadzanai Chiuriri
Image Credit: un.org
