5th March 2022
Maybe I...
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Maybe I’m inspired
Maybe I want to change the world
Maybe I’m willing to lose it all
Maybe…
I was going to say that maybe I’m not an average girl but that would be contradictory. What have I done to prove myself? What has given me the audacity to claim any form of originality?
I read books for a living it seems and I study theories. Like the Black Radical Tradition and Postcolonialism. I understand the political context surrounding Zimbabwe’s perpetual struggle for independence and I can point at the white man and say you. It is your fault I am this far away from my home and I seek Eurocentric validation. You. It is your fault I walk around in trousers that chafe my thighs and I sip earl grey tea. You. You. You.
Yet as much as I yearn for my homeland I do nothing to reach for her. I do nothing to bandage her cuts and massage her bruises. I do nothing to lay out a map for the passage away from the suffering of my people. I say You but what I mean is me.
Me as I sit here writing down poetry and watching documentaries about Angela Davis and reading Toni Morrison. Me as I sit in a lecture hall full of white students and scorn them for their lack of understanding of my struggle. Me as I listen to NWA as I walk across the cathedral.
I am ashamed that I have too much to lose. I am ashamed that the people around me have too much to lose.
I am inspired, I do want to change the world but I am not willing to lose it all.
As my people bleed I study a continent away for an education I claim will bring them salvation. But it is their gravestones that will be engraved and their homesteads that will be left empty. While my sisters sit in the hot sun selling tomatoes and my brothers fill in potholes it is I who will drive past and toss a coin into their cup and pat myself on the back for a good deed.
I am not inspired nor do I want to change this world. This world that has gifted me privilege. That God-forsaken word that does nothing but lace all of my actions in a self-serving mist that lingers even when I claim to have the best intentions.
I have forsaken my people and for that I shall never know peace.
Maybe I will be inspired
Maybe I will want to change the world
Maybe I am willing to lose it all
Maybe…
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— Matikudza Chiromo​​
