By Melissa Kiguwa
nobody talks about the way losing a love does
more than ache your heart,
nobody sings the way this ache be a
travellin kinda wound.
a serial hunter, this ache
presses into lungs,
chokes blood flow,
plays artery lines
like bridge wires,
til all in all is falling down.
this ache rattles itself into bones.
sometimes you feel the tear.
cartilage, fat,
ligaments, muscles
all left discarded like the day
i held you explode.
nobody talks about the way a checkpoint
can rattle your bones.
or the color line.
the way a black heart can only hold onto
other black brown beating hearts
till it can’t love no more,
that love come again is a tedious journey
for these tired done turned lazy bones.
some bones are natural become griots.
they creak like stories of old abolitionist
attics,
breaking, sometimes they remember
hiding in swamps, sometimes they snap.
you can only wade in so many waters,
can only build continents across so many backs,
till all that gives breaks,
like the first heartbreak
where i held you,
your body breaking
from bullets that knew your color,
knew you too brown to be beautiful,
too beautiful to bud.
these burgundy bones
need more than calcium and rest,
but nobody tells the stories of
hands that abloom dead deposits
to living beginnings.
hands that massage salve into the
deepest shooting pain
resurrecting stars from ache
to something
your bullet could never touch,
until it did.
but nobody talks about this kind of
heart break, the kind that travels
like soldiers and
hurts like the time i held you explode.
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based in kampala, uganda, melissa is a dusty footed nomad learning the beauty of being still. she is in love with babys’ laughter, chest to chest hugs, and soul to heart conversations on lifetimes and how we fit within them. she writes poetry and short stories that examine neo-colonialism, imperialism and injustice(s). in her works she reimagines liberation(s), new horizons, transcontinental legacy building, and love(s). she sees her words as a literary insurrection of sorts…
