Wingless

The doctor confirms that my father has seen the last twilight

from where he was lying, a place of stillness, 

a place where life stops like a train.

At that point, he is fully broken—soul and body—

and he asks if I want his body customized for grief,

his body scarred from the shackle binding it, as my inheritance.

This body has sung a hopeful song into a requiem.

This body he says carried him this far, if not a Methuselah’s distance, 

at least lived enough to constellate a tale far from what he was told, 

what he read in the history books, about us,

about Africa, about mistaken identity—

what they said we were and we are not, 

what they said we have and we do not have.

In the story his father told him, Africa is a free land. 

What my history teacher taught me shows almost the whole world

agrees with grandpa. Do they know Africa’s kind of bird doesn’t fly, 

doesn’t go beyond the cage? No, not close to the border.

No, not when it’s Black, the colour they hate to see in the cloud.

Into a new era, the wor(l)d of God shapeshifts, 

and everything high tech, even slavery, is now contemporary.

Like other children, in lonely little homes, tired of being caged, 

weary of being wingless, at a point of war, 

at a point of losing their identity, making paper planes, 

I learnt freedom begins with art. And many times, 

I’ve drawn the map of Africa on a paper plane, flown it deep 

into the heavens for God to understand how much I want her free.