Um… so…
you’d have me thank you,
for your failure to kill me?
Have I got that right?
I survived despite you,
not because of you.
I am stronger despite you,
not because of you.
You didn’t make me.
I made me, in spite of your desperate efforts.
You are still the poison that creeps.
You are still the knife in the night.
You are still the rat finding nothing to eat,
under a sky of buzzards.
Forgive me,
but you will have nothing to eat,
today,
nor tomorrow.
nor the next day.
Charl Landsberg is a South African poet who’s work often focusses on issues of social justice, mental health and surviving abuse.