Between Thoughts -Intellectual Musings

                       A poem in witness

I walked into a place where boys go

when the world has nowhere left to put them.

And there he was —

tender as morning,

smile like something God hadn’t finished making.

He was singing.

Not the kind of singing that fills a room with joy.

The kind that empties a chest of grief.

An indictment.

Why not me, God?

          Why does everyone else get chosen?

          Why does everyone else say – favoured?

while I learned Your name as an excuse?

I sat beside him.

What’s your name?

He didn’t hesitate.

Beautiful Mess.

Beautiful Disaster.

I asked him — beautiful I understand.

But why mess? Why disaster?

He looked at me the way only the truly wounded look —

             not with anger,

             not with tears,

but with the flat, exhausted truth

of someone who has explained himself

                               to no one,

                                for no one,

                                        for too long.

My parents pawned me.

Not heirlooms. Not furniture. Not the TV.

Me.

For a day’s high.

I was the currency of their craving.

Men came.

Men paid.

I learned that my body was a transaction

before I learned to read.

They left me at an orphanage door.

Which became another orphanage door.

Which became another.

Until I stopped counting doors

      and started counting bridges.

The hobos were kinder.

He said this quietly,

almost as an observation,

almost as philosophy —

Hobos understood naked shame.

They didn’t pretend.

            “Normal” people pretend.

Benzene and petrol —

leaded, unleaded,

sometimes diesel.

The body learns to love

what numbs it.

Nyaope.

Alcohol.

Porn.

Anything that makes here

feel less like here.

Four times I tried to leave.

Four times my soul  refused.

He said this without drama.

As a man reports the weather.

I tried to die four times

and couldn’t finish that either.

Then one night —

high and floating above himself —

a man touched him.

And something ancient

and cornered

and done with being taken

rose up in him.

And he stabbed that man

nearly to death.

                             It felt good.

Not because I’m violent.

Because I finally refused.

But nobody teaches you

      the difference between

            defending yourself

            setting boundaries

            and committing a crime.

Nobody taught me anything

      except how to survive

      in ways that get you locked up.

And so — Juvenile Detention.

Then again.

Starting to feel like home, he said.

And that —

that —

is the sentence that should break us.

A boy

whose only experience of consistency

is a cell.

A boy

who found more safety in detention

than in the arms of every adult

who was supposed to love him.

His name is not a name.

It is a verdict we handed down.

Beautiful —

because something in him survived

every attempt to destroy it.

Mess. Disaster —

because we made him one

and called it patriachy – his fault.

He is not the crisis.

We are.

Every boy pawned.

Every door left at.

Every bridge slept under.

Is a question addressed to us —

What were you doing
while this was happening?

He is still singing.

Somewhere,

a boy with an angelic smile

is indicting God.

When he should be indicting us.

Because God didn’t make him an addict’s currency.

We did.

God didn’t make detention his first home.

We did.

And God is not the one sitting silently

      while he tries to die four times

      in a country that says it loves all  its children.

We are.

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Dr. Mzamo Masito — Between Thoughts: Intellectual Musings

Where the uncomfortable questions get a seat at the table.