Saba Boru, Mercy
Mercy
Saba Boru
Each wound drapes a beaded suffering.
We weave blood quilt enough to embrace us
tender, empty, hardly living.
Shade swallows sun and freedom unopen.
My mother was once shelter,
golden shingles under luster cloud,
frame resting on emerald palm.
My mother is a platter of west invasion,
a scoop of barren remains with hostage wrists.
A bludgeoning of braided fingers join
ripped tongue forced to be smiling English.
My mother, a tart red lake of losing.
Her back, a stanchion holding young, brown,
velvet graves, bruised necks swinging common and barefoot
tied to sagging branches.
She is purple milk, clamor in breasts.
We cannot fathom a city, a body, a continent
mourning dry and simple as mother.
Her singing peels an awful chorus of wolves who rape wide, serve stone,
hoard diamonds to clasp as fangs in their insatiable mouths.
She will trust harmony, still, hear faint stretch of orange calm
possible beneath charred dusk.
She will receive them,
just rebellion colored meandering wild things. Kiss them human again.
Be thankful.
Mother is not listening to wrath boiling, choked up in her stomach,
God enough to keep forgiving.
Saba Boru is currently shapeshifting her entire soul into a timeless piece of African literature, writing to the echo of ancestors. She is a graduate of the University of North Texas creative writing program but experiencing evolution under the tutelage of life. She is part chaos, part constellation, unraveling from “normal” one layer at a time.