Written By: Freddy Nyezi
Everything is unraveling at the seams.
I am coming undone and
the very fabric that
my reality consists of is
shredding itself –
the fibre that holds
all of it
together
is cutting itself some slack.
I walk around, acting like
I’m denim jeans but
I’m really just cotton.
I’m spandex on special days but
I’m never Levi Strauss enough
to withstand it all.
Bazoseka.
Bazotonga ngai but
I’m the one left in stitches.
I’m sewing myself back together.
Sometimes I sleep with
a ruler under my pillow
to measure my (in)sanity,
I can never recount my dreams
And my thoughts are nightmares
with the full potential to materialise.
They’re illusions of me and a needle,
tattooing my forearms,
tracing my veins and
inking my skin with
the ichor that seeps
from those vessels.
They’re delusions of me
hanging by a thread,
a taut noose of a thread
then resting 6 feet below your feet,
in a cotton suit,
in a cotton-padded coffin.
These hallucinations are ideations of an escape. But I’m alive because ideations are an escape.
NOTES:
It is written in English and Lingala.
The title, literally translated, means “needle and thread”. ‘Tonga’ means ‘needle’ but it also means ‘to taunt/make fun of’.
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