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Education as Change
On-line version ISSN 1947-9417
Print version ISSN 1682-3206
Educ. as change vol.24 n.1 Pretoria 2020
http://dx.doi.org/10.25159/1947-9417/8793
THEMED SECTION 2
POETRY
Nkwana Joshua Serutle
University of South Africa. psjoshua.jn@gmail.com
every time someone passes on in the family
our elders command us to wear black clothes for the funeral
to mourn the corpse in the morning
to capture a memory of one of us in a coffin
to wear a feeling of a dead body inside a coffin
and when the coffin sinks
the choir hums hymns like deflated bodies
they remind us of emptiness and loneliness
of how to make a song live without a voice
of how to make a home inside a black hole
of how to stay strong within a quaking body
our elders command us not to shed tears
not to turn our bodies into tornadoes
I wish to tell them I'm cold enough to fit inside a grave
that I've been dead ever since the funeral announcement
that my body knows how breathless the grave is
I wish to tell them how dead I am
but I' m afraid to in debt their hearts with so much loss