I shall not look for you here
This decrepit shell
That draws foetally inwards
Cannot contain
All that is you
Dulled blue irises
Are not your once-vibrant violet
Atrophied limbs
Not the arms that lifted me
Onto your shoulders
Stunted coughs
And feebled hiccups
Are not
The off-key soprano
Of your full-voiced song
This shrunken spine
Is not the backbone
That stood up to apartheid
Convention
And being told what to do
Yet still I speak
Because somehow I know
Your spirit is listening
From the place
Between two worlds
This disease
Which has damn near killed us both
Will not win in the end
And we shall meet again whole
Where the light doesn’t fade.
But not yet,
Not yet.
I’m a copywriter by trade and a poet by love.